


Sightlines

by octaviaflies



Category: Stardew Valley (Video Game)
Genre: Emotional Baggage, F/M, Friendship/Love, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Mentions of Cancer, Minor Character Death, Original Character(s), Past Abuse, Robin is best Mom, Sebastian is an Anxious Mess, Slice of Life, no seriously Robin is Best Mom
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-11
Updated: 2019-02-18
Packaged: 2019-10-08 09:10:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 23,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17383760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/octaviaflies/pseuds/octaviaflies
Summary: The farmer dreams. The lover responds.It is when Sebastian is clacking away at his computer hours later, fixing errors in coding and sipping at stale coffee, that he realized just what it was about Renee’s eyes that unnerved him.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Gentle reminder to be wary of the tags! This fanfic has been a product of me working through some of my own traumas in a more light-hearted manner, which may align with some triggers/squicks for others. They will not be particularly graphic and I’ll be making separate warnings for any chapters that need them, but please use caution all the same. Stay safe and happy reading! <3

The first dream comes in blue-gray tones and broken asphalt under weary feet. Worn cotton and polyester folded over her arms, shielding from the cool evening wind. A pair of crows call to one another in the distance, piercing through the quiet dusk.

There is silence.

And then there's a man. He's weathered, face leathery with wrinkles, hair falling in ragged white streaks across his face. His eyes are shadowed in the dark, but she feels them gazing at her. Or through her. Piercing and cold and crawling along her spine at a slow, deliberate pace.

She crests the hill, flicks her gaze to the house that stands at the beginning of a steep valley. A voice croaks and it takes a moment for her to parse the sound as actual words.

"Your home?" He asks, and she freezes in place. Stares at the house. Then turns, looks at him, at the slow and menacing grin that stretches over crooked and yellowed teeth, and something clicks into place.

She turns and runs.

The pavement burns beneath her feet. A cackle rises in the air and she shivers, refusing to turn around and look at the sight she was sure to greet her. He was following. Fast and sure-footed, whilst she stumbled and shuddered and pounded her way along, ripping down the hill and into the driveway. She shoulders her way through the front door, dismayed suddenly by the glass windows that offered no protection, slamming the door behind her and gasping as she shoved her weight against it.

Something pushed back. Dirtied fingers claw their way through the frame, shoving and scrambling for purchase, bloodshot eyes gleaming at her through the door. He laughs again. She cries.

And then she wakes, heart pounding in her chest, hot sweat pooled at her back, staring at the ceiling for what feels like ages. The moonlight filters through the curtain. She doesn't fall back asleep.

 

 

 

  
If eyes are the language of the soul, Sebastian is practically fluent. Eyes surround him in the small community of Pelican Town, observing his every movement and thought with the keen sense for gossip that low populations always seemed to cultivate. In turn, he studied those eyes. Partially to defend himself—to know just how far to tread, toeing the line between anonymity and normality without raising the wearying suspicions of others—and partially out of a fascination born of boredom. He studied eyes, mostly, because they were interesting.

Sam's eyes were the easiest. They were unguarded, open and honest, dancing with passion and light as neon-colored as the posters on his bedroom wall. Shadows rarely crossed those eyes, but even when they did they were never locked away. He wore them openly, like a badge of honor, not out of naïvety or innocence but out of a sincere desire to grow. To be better. To be someone his family would be proud of.

Abigail's eyes were wilder. A little vicious, a little feral, with a snap as sharp as her tongue and a light as blinding as her smile. There was hurt there, too, locked away behind shadowed curtains that rarely opened. Fear, sometimes. But mostly they were merely happy, content in her own self-actualization. Confident. Her eyes, he often thought, would be a little too easy to fall in love with.

Then there was his family. Maru, whose smile always seemed present in her gaze, even when dark tendrils of hurt wrapped around her irises and shone through her glasses as she turned that gaze towards a too distant half-brother. Robin, whose eyes held the gravity of a mother's love, her fears and concerns shrouded by a heavy mist, always a little too happy and cheerful to be entirely believed. Demetrius, whose eyes were never cold nor warm, malcontent nor approving, almost viciously painful in their distant disregard for anything—or anyone, Sebastian would consider darkly—that was deemed unimportant enough for consideration.

The villagers' eyes varied. Some eyes he grew tired of quickly—Lewis' eyes warm but often ill-content, Clint's distant and scared, Haley's scornful and insecure, Leah's mischievous and suffocatingly sweet as honey—and some he found himself watching again and again, curious and intrigued, like watching a waterspout forming over the ocean. Dangerous and fascinating all at once.

And then there were the very few that, most days, merely terrified him to look at.

Shane's eyes were a little too bleak. Anger was there, yes, molten and roiling like chocolate set to boil only to burn in the pot. Choked with smoke and suffering and grotesque insecurity that said it didn't care, the world could burn for all it was worth, and those eyes wouldn't even bat a lash. Those eyes would be relieved.

Those eyes were uncomfortably familiar. There were echoes, faint traces, that gazed back at him whenever Sebastian looked in the mirror. Traces that he longed to scrape and scrub away until the only thing that remained was the bits and pieces of himself that he clung to like a dying man. The bits and pieces he could be proud of, one day.

Sometimes he wondered, on the rare days that Shane was sober and clean, whether the man could see the unwilling camaraderie in Sebastian's eyes. The way he avoided looking at them, Sebastian might have been tempted into believing he did, if only Sebastian's eyes were the only one's Shane avoided looking into.

And, finally, the farmer. Whose eyes Sebastian's had yet to see, though he had been informed—loudly and often—that she had been in town for some weeks now. Sam had told him she came from the city, that she seemed nice. Abby told him the farm, once owned by the kindly Mr. Mauger, had actually been her grandfather's. And Robin had quirked an eyebrow at him, hands on her hips, and told him to get off his ass and be friendly to the poor girl, for heaven's sake, she needs some friends.

He flipped her off when he thought she wasn't looking. She rolled her eyes and smacked his head. It was a pretty good day, all things considered.

So when the day came that he heard an unfamiliar voice chattering with his mother's upstairs, a curiosity had been planted in his anti-social brain. It wouldn't take much, he had thought, to catch a glimpse of this elusive farmer when she was in his own home. He could grab a snack—it was nearly his time for lunch anyways—peek around the corner for a look and disappear back into the basement before even being discovered. It was a flawless plan.

Which is, inevitably, why it failed.  
  
Her back was turned to him when he climbed the last step and peered out of the hallway. She held a box in her hands, half propping it on the desk, laughing cheerfully as she insisted that Robin take whatever she wanted.

"Honestly," she was saying, cocking her hip against the polished wood as Robin came out from behind the desk. "It's the least I can do for my favorite member of the welcoming committee."

Robin snorted a laugh. "Don't let Lewis hear you say that, he'll be heartbroken."

A shrug lifted her shoulders. "Oh, I'm sure he'll find someone to pick up the pieces." She replied happily. "Now, come on, take part in my spoils before my noodle arms fall off trying to hold them up."

Robin protested only mildly, too enticed by the freshness of the produce—still warm from the sun—to say no for too long. She had already plucked a few parsnips and was examining a bundle of green beans when she spotted Sebastian, half turning away to continue his journey to the kitchen, and called out to him. He froze, grimaced, and turned back to obey her summons with reluctant feet.

"Sebastian, take these into the kitchen for me," Robin said, depositing the vegetables into his waiting arms with a brief smile. The farmer shuffled with her box and Robin paused. "Wait, have you two met yet?"

She knew they hadn't. Sebastian sent her a warning glare, which was ignored with the practiced ease of a mother on a mission. "Renee, this is my son, Sebastian. Sebastian, our local farmer extraordinaire!"

The farmer, Renee, laughed lightly. "Well, I don't know about that, but it's nice to meet you all the same, Sebastian."

When Sebastian turned to look at her, he froze again.

Later, he would say it was surprise that rooted him in place. Surprise that this was the farmer everyone had been talking about, this wisp of a girl with the wry grin and messy hair, who held boxes of vegetables too big for her arms to reach around and whose head barely came to meet his chest. Later than that, he'll admit there had been a spark of fear that tremored down his spine as her eyes met his. Her smile, sincere and warm as it seemed on her face, was not echoed in those bright green eyes. They were safeguarded, tightly packed away from purview in a way he was entirely unfamiliar with—except that wasn't exactly right. Guarded was not the word to describe the look in those eyes. It didn't match the open expression on her face or the relaxed lines of the shoulders. It didn't fit the baby hairs that fell from her braid, framing the shape of her face. It didn't fit at all.

(Even later than that, in the far distant future, Sebastian will whisper quietly that there was a faint echo of arousal, too, that grounded him at that moment. So soft and surprising, he could hardly register its existence.)

She smiled. His mother coughed. He tightened his grip on the vegetables and shrugged.

"Nice to meet you," he said after a moment, glancing at the clock on the wall and then Robin deliberately. "I need to get back to work."

"Ah, right," Robin made a shooing motion with her hand, but something in her eyes shifted. The gray mists parted and something else slinked in, almost smug as the corners of her mouth began to creep upwards. She turned to Renee as that grin stretched across her face. "Sebastian here is a programmer. He's landed himself a bit work with that hot-shot starter-up company in Zuzu—what was the name of that company, again, Seb?"

Sebastian's shoulders tensed, a horrified sense of understanding cutting through the fog in his brain. "Ozark." He said after a moment of silence, as if the word physically pained him to say. Robin snapped her fingers.

"That's the one! Ever heard of it, Renee?" Robin's voice was full of warm and friendly innocence, as if she couldn't sense the desperate dread pulsing from her son in hot, dark waves.

Renee cocked her head, seemingly oblivious to the complicated machinations of mother and son. "It sounds familiar. But," she cautioned swiftly, "Zuzu is a big city. After a while all the corporations start to sound the same, both big and small."

"I'm sure," Robin commiserated. "Although, maybe you and Seb should get together sometime and talk about it. He's been thinking of moving out to the city, after all, it might be nice for some fresh perspective."

Sebastian stifled an inward scream. Robin's grin widened. Renee looked pleasantly confused.

"Um. Sure, I guess." She said, polite and cheerful yet, and Robin practically crowed with delight. Sebastian wondered vaguely if death was truly an inevitability and why, dear Yoba, it had forsaken him now.

"Wonderful! How about Friday? Seb usually goes down to the saloon to hang out with Abigail and Sam—you've met them, right?—and I can treat you to a cocktail in thanks for my family's supper tonight."

"Mom—" Sebastian had started warningly, but Renee was already laughing, an apologetic note winding around her tongue.

"That sounds amazing," she said, "but, honestly, I have so much work to do at the farm. I don't know if I can spare the time just yet."

"Well," Robin continued, undeterred. "How about you come here for dinner this week, instead? Say, Wednesday? It's supposed to rain."

Renee hesitated, green eyes flickering up to Sebastian's again and dancing across his face as if in silent question. He wondered what she saw when she suddenly looked down at her box, a wry twist of her lips pulling at her expression.

"Alright," she agreed, to Robin's clear delight. "But if I don't get this amazing peach cobbler you keep raving about, I'm going to be deeply disappointed."

It is when Sebastian is clacking away at his computer hours later, fixing errors in coding and sipping at stale coffee, that he realized just what it was about Renee's eyes that unnerved him. It hit him with a strange electric current, pushing him to sit back in his seat and stare at the wall in silent consternation.

Because it wasn't, he decided, that Renee's eyes were guarded. It was that they were entirely devoid of any emotion at all.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mother and Son talk.
> 
>  
> 
> “Eh,” Abigail waggled her hand in a so-so gesture. “I figure if Sebastian is about to meet his betrothed, he should have as much of an advantage as I can give him.”

“My mother,” Sebastian started the next day, the edge of Sam’s bed digging into his back and Abigail’s socked toes brushing his thighs, “is trying to set me up.”

Abigail didn’t look up from her phone, though Sam spluttered on a laugh, fingers faltering a discordant note on his guitar. He shot Sebastian an incredulous look, to which Sebastian merely shrugged, and set the guitar down on the bed beside him.

“Who?” he needled, eyes flashing with trepidation. “Not Penny?”

Abigail sighed in tandem with Sebastian’s ensuing snort, a sign that she, too, was listening carefully. Sebastian tilted his head, “No, not Penny. Your crush is safe,” he plastered a sickeningly sweet smile on his face. “Although she won’t be for long unless you ask her out, Romeo.”

“Amen to that,” Abigail muttered. Sam’s face fell, as it always did when they spoke about Penny, his eyes cutting away to gaze blankly at the wall.

“I’m working on it,” he grimaced, turning back to Sebastian with an incensed gleam. “And don’t compare us to Romeo and Juliet, dude, that’s like the Macbeth curse for _love_ or some shit.”

Sebastian snorted another laugh. “Whatever you say.”

A victorious, happy jingle issued from the tinny speakers of Abigail’s phone and she hummed along happily, finally setting the phone down with a grin and a raised brow. “So? Who’s the lucky girl? Guy? Non-binary hottie?”

“Girl,” Sebastian confirmed, then hesitated. “At least, I think? I didn’t ask for pronouns. Shit.”

Sam looked amused. “There is a very limited number of people in this town whose pronouns you wouldn’t know. In fact, I can think of one. Rest easy, Renee goes by her by all accounts.”

“Oh, my god,” Abigail trilled a laugh as Sebastian nodded his thanks to Sam. “Robin is setting you up with the farmer? Shit, that’s amazing. It’s like a Greek play. Basement-dwelling goblin becomes sun-slash-harvest goddess’ hubby. You’ll make _millions_ , my dude.”

“God,” Sebastian drawled, scrubbing his hand down his face. “Don’t even joke about that. I don’t know what mom’s thinking. I literally stood in the room for five seconds and suddenly she’s _bragging_ about me and inviting her for dinner so I can get a ‘fresh perspective’ about the city.”

“I bet that’s not the only fresh perspective she wants you to get.” Sam teased, saucy grin widening further at Sebastian’s feigned gagging and Abigail’s encouraging ‘eyyy.’ “No, but seriously, Seb, it could be a lot worse. Count your blessings.”

Abigail nodded at Sebastian’s skeptical glance. “Renee doesn’t seem that bad. The way she keeps to herself, I doubt she’ll even jump on the ‘let’s get Sebby laid’ train. Hell, the only time I’ve ever seen her outside of delivering produce to the store, it was when she was trudging her way out of the mines.”

“The mines?” Sam echoed, clearly incredulous and a little awed. “Why the fuck would she go down there?”

“Dunno,” Abigail shrugged, grinning wildly. “She was covered in slime and scratches, though. Gave me quartz as hush money, too, so I’ve got her pegged as a fellow delinquent.”

“Doesn’t hush money imply that you’re supposed to keep the incident hushed and not blab about it to whoever will listen?”

“Eh,” Abigail waggled her hand in a so-so gesture. “I figure if Sebastian is about to meet his betrothed, he should have as much of an advantage as I can give him.”

The room echoed with twin laughter and a desperate—and only very mildly amused—groan.

 

 

  
Wednesday came faster than Sebastian would have liked, even with hours of codes and modules to distract him. Robin drew him out of the basement sometime in the late afternoon, citing her need for help prepping dinner as an excuse, and Sebastian didn’t argue the matter. Even when the only thing she had left for him to do was to set a pot of water to boil and peel a bowl of potatoes that she had washed and set aside.

They worked in comfortable silence for some while—Sebastian seated at the dining table, Robin chopping the radishes for the salad on the counter—the golden light of the afternoon pouring molten past the waning cloud cover and in through the window, dancing with the dust motes and saw dust flitting in the air. The scent of caramel and peaches flooded the small kitchen, mingling with the pork chops and caramelized onions simmering away in the cast iron skillet. Robin eyed him as they worked, the same slinky smugness prowling in her eyes like a panther.

“You know,” she said softly, just loud enough to be heard over the chopping of her knife. “I really think you and Renee would get along. She reminds me of you.”

Sebastian hummed noncommittally, tossing a long spiral of peel into the growing pile beside him. “Alright,” he replied when it became clear she was waiting for a response. She cut him an exasperated glance.

“You could stand to be a little more enthusiastic, Sebby.”

“Who, me?” Sebastian looked up, his features carefully blank and dry. “I’m ecstatic, can’t you tell?”

Robin snorted on a laugh, flicking her still-damp fingers in his face. He grinned back at her, pulling away to grab a spare cutting board and knife from the block, cutting the potatoes into even chunks. Robin sighed as she watched him work.

“I’m worried about her.”

Sebastian paused, brows knitting together in confusion as he shot her a glance. She looked down at her pile of radishes.

“You’re probably too young to remember,” she said after a moment, her gaze meandering to the window, that shadowed mist growing heavy and damp like that morning’s rainclouds in her eyes. “It was so long ago, now. Back when the valley was thriving. The farm wasn’t called the farm then—it was The Grove. An agricultural wonder. There was so much traffic coming through the town, you’d hardly believe it had a population of a few scant hundred. The orchards, produce, artisanal goods, dairy and fresh eggs. There was no Joja Mart then, no reason for one to exist. Mr. Mauger and Pierre were all anyone needed, really.”

“I remember.” Sebastian interrupted softly, drawing Robin’s surprised gaze. “Or, at least, I remember Mr. Mauger. He used to sneak me cranberry candy when no one was looking.”

Robin laughed. “You and every other damn kid in this town,” she shook her head, lips twisted in a faint smile of remembrance. “God, everyone loved him. We were so shocked when he left.”

Sebastian stood, carefully depositing the potatoes into the boiling water. “Why did he leave? If the farm really was thriving, and he was happy here, why leave?”

“No one knew,” Robing shrugged, moving to flip the pork chops over. “But there was this rumor.”

“When is there not?”

Robin rolled her eyes but otherwise ignored him. “Supposedly, something had happened to his family in the city. An accident, some folks said. Others alluded to there being more of a—” she frowned at the pork chops. “Well, they thought the police might have been involved.”

Sebastian looked up, surprise written in the lines of his face, to which Robin merely shrugged in response. “I don’t know what’s true or not,” Robin asserted. “He would write to some of us, occasionally, but he never explained and no one seemed brave enough to ask. We all just let it go. And The Grove disappeared with him.”

Sebastian leaned his hip against the counter, shoving his hands deep into the fleece-lined pocket of his hoodie. “And now his grandkid is here and you’re trying to set us up.”

“Excuse me?” Robin choked, shooting Sebastian a scandalized glance that melted quickly into bashful amusement. “Well, I won’t deny that I’d love to see a little romance in your life before I die,” she commented, prompting Sebastian to roll his own eyes in exasperation. “But I meant what I said before. I’m worried about her, Sebby. She came here so suddenly—almost as suddenly as her grandfather left—and with so very little. Like she was running from something.”

“Or maybe she just wanted a fresh start,” Sebastian suggested.

“Maybe,” Robin conceded, brushing him out of the way as she peered into the oven to check on the cobbler. “But a fresh start from what? I’m just saying,” she continued before Sebastian could argue the point, “that something feels off. Call it a mother’s intuition. I know she seems cheerful enough, but sometimes when I look at her, I get the feeling something is wrong and I can’t figure out what.”

 _It’s her eyes,_ Sebastian thought but didn’t say, wordlessly handing his mother a set of potholders. _They’re too empty._

“Romance or not,” Robin set the pie dish on a rack by the window, cracked open slightly to let in the cool breeze coming down from the mountain range. There was a knock at the front door and Robin straightened, smoothing her hair down and looking at him with heavy eyes. “She needs a friend, Sebastian.”

And the worst part, Sebastian would consider as he set the table and Robin went to greet their guest and call the others to the table, was that he couldn’t even disagree with her.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dinner is had. A resolution is made.
> 
>  
> 
> “Everybody’s got a dream,” Renee responded placidly as she accepted her plate, a teasing smile on her lips. “Even if they’re someone else’s nightmare.”

Dinner ended up a quieter affair than Sebastian thought it would be. Maru and Demetrius were both mildly pleasant but in the throes of some new experiment that left them more distracted than usual. Robin led the majority of the conversation, which Renee seemed content to allow with only the requisite compliments on the food to deviate. Robin had lit up at the words, nudging Sebastian beside her and gushing about his help, and Renee had turned and thanked him before he could even deny the voracious praise.

Eventually, the conversation turned towards the farm, which elicited a mildly more spirited reaction from the short farmer. 

“I think the fields to the west might be dealing with some disease,” she said with a wrinkle of her nose. “I cleared a path yesterday only to come across a tangled mess of boulders I couldn’t budge and dead-rotted wood.”

“The west?” Robin furrowed her brow, chin propped in her hand. “That might have been the old barn, actually. I seem to recall the animals grazing near the pond behind the apricot trees. Demetrius?”

Demetrius glanced up from his plate, eyes mildly glazed with thoughts of whatever bunsens were still burning away in his laboratory. “I believe there used to be a map of the grounds in its prime. Perhaps with Lewis?”

“Oh, that’s a good idea,” Robin gushed as she turned back to Renee. “We can ask Lewis for the old blueprints of the farm. Give you some ideas on what to do with the land. Maybe even improve on some of the old structures.”

Renee smiled. It didn’t reach her eyes and Sebastian frowned. “That sounds brilliant,” she said, happy tone belying her gaze. “Honestly, I’m at a loss over here. I’m a city-bred bumpkin with absolutely no clue what the hell I’m doing.”

She laughed and Maru looked at her curiously. “What made you come to the valley, then?”

“I’m not sure,” Renee shrugged, smile never faltering. Sebastian wondered if that was a lie. “When Grandpa died, he left the entire estate to me. I thought about selling it, but that seemed wrong somehow so, eventually, it just seemed like the only thing I _could_ do. I wanted to make him proud, I suppose.”

She shrugged eloquently and Maru nodded, seeming to accept the words at face value, but something in Sebastian’s head echoed a dim warning. It wasn’t in her words, so simple and unrefined, drawling out as if she had never thought quite so hard about her motivations for leaving the city. It wasn’t in her gestures, soft and restrained as if making the conscious effort to be pleasant and polite. It wasn’t even in her eyes, still blank and empty as they flicked across the room and alighted on faces and smiles.

No, it was more subtle than all of that, a secret whisper of something begot of the knowledge his mother imparted. What was it she had said? That Renee had arrived as suddenly as her grandfather had left? A departure that, if the rumor mill was to be believed, had been heralded by some disaster.

A disaster that no one knew or could define, secret as the grave Mr. Mauger now slept in.

His mother’s eyes, he noticed when he looked towards them, were darker than they had been only a moment prior.

“Do you miss the city?” Robin prodded gently, standing to collect the empty plates in preparation for dessert. Renee almost stood to help, laughing lightly when Robin waggled a finger in her face and told her to sit back down.

“Not so much,” Renee admitted. There was a tremulous warble to her voice and Sebastian’s eyes snapped to her, assessing and curious. She drummed her fingers against the table. “It gets crowded in the city, sometimes. I wouldn’t mind visiting, on occasion, but I’m glad I don’t live there anymore. Not as much trouble.”

“Well,” Robin tossed a grin over her shoulder. “You should try telling Sebby that. He’s been entertaining the fantasy that is Zuzu City since he was old enough to have an independent thought.”

It seemed, quite suddenly, unpleasantly warm in the small kitchen as Robin deposited the peach cobbler and vanilla ice cream in front of him. Renee flicked him a glance, which he ignored by stuffing a slightly too-hot peach slice in his mouth.

“Everybody’s got a dream,” Renee responded placidly as she accepted her plate, a teasing smile on her lips. “Even if they’re someone else’s nightmare.”

“And the city is a nightmare?” Sebastian asked before he could stop himself, spooning melting ice cream into his mouth as he watched Renee blink across the table

“For some,” she said after a moment, a wafer-thin caution woven between the words. For a moment, Sebastian thought he saw something flicker in her eyes. And then the moment was gone. The eyes were blank, her smile warm and wide, no indication of bluster left in her face as she turned back to Robin, praise on her tongue as she tasted the cobbler she had heard so much about.

They didn’t broach the topic of Zuzu City again that night.

 

 

“So the farmer has secrets,” Sam said later, thumb pressing thrice in quick succession at the button of the controller in his hand. The pixelated character on screen ducked, rolled, and flipped around to slash at an enemy. “Cool.”

Sebastian’s controller rumbled in hand. “We don’t actually know that she’s got secrets." 

“We kinda know she’s got secrets,” Abigail retorted from where she sat next to them, eyes glued to the screen. “Goddamn it, Sam, you’re about to die _again_.”

“Fuck,” Sam muttered, fleeing from a fresh wave of enemies to down a healing item. Sebastian groaned as the mob doubled on him, urging Sam to hurry. “I’m trying, dude, relax. Tell me more about farmer girl’s secrets.”

Sebastian wrinkled his nose. “You’re worse than Haley with the gossip sometimes.”

“Yes, well,” Sam shrugged, returning to the battle with slightly more health. “My mom’s best friend happens to be the biggest gossip in Pelican Town—no offense, Abby—so it was kind of inevitable that I continue the vicious cycle. It’s my _legacy_.”

“Whatever,” Sebastian responded as Abigail snorted in amusement. “There’s nothing really to tell, anyway. I don’t know what her deal is.”

“But she does have a deal,” Abigail concluded, cleanly wiping out three goons with a combo. Sebastian breathed a sigh of relief as the wave of enemies began to lighten up.

“I don’t know,” he said after a moment, rolling his eyes at the twin scoffs. “No, honestly, I have no clue. I’ve spent all of two hours around the woman. Something seems off about her, but that could just be my socially anxious emo senses tingling, as you so lovingly call them.”

Sam laughed loudly. “Fine, we’ve established how awkward you are around humans. What about your mom?” he asked. “She’s trying to throw you two together, right? Has she noticed anything?”

Sebastian hesitated just long enough to be hit by a stray blast, knocking his health down to a dangerous level and issuing a line of expletives from his mouth. “Fuck, okay, cover me,” Sebastian demanded, ignoring Sam’s smug cries of ‘see, it’s not so easy, is it?’ as he used the last of his bandage reserves to heal. The conversation ground to a halt as the three finally concentrated, narrowly winning the battle after another few minutes of tense fighting. Sam crowed with delight and Abigail flopped backwards with a relieved groan.

“Shit, that was harder than I thought it would be. We should have fucking levelled up,” Abigail said, turning to poke Sebastian in the side after a moment had passed. He jumped, running his hand over his flank with a glare in her direction. “Spill the beans, kid.”

He sighed. “I guess,” he started, hesitated. “Mom’s worried about her, I guess. Said she needed a friend. Called it a mother’s intuition.”

It wasn’t the full story, not by a long shot, nor did it include his quiet reservation and curiosities as he had stared at the young farmer across the dinner table. He could have told them, he knew, and they wouldn’t have judged him for the thoughts, but something about them seemed almost private. A quiet bank of reflection meant for his eyes alone, to ponder over and parse like the lines in his code. Maybe Sam and Abigail would understand and maybe they wouldn’t, but he wasn’t sure it mattered either way.

So he whet their appetites with the bare minimum of what he could offer, letting them come to their own conclusions about the newcomer in the same way he would, in time. Maybe they would even reach the same conclusions one day.

Sam was the first to speak again. “Should we invite her to the saloon?”

Abigail peered up at him, a frown tugging at her mouth. Sebastian shrugged helplessly.

“Well, fuck,” Sam laughed, a little incredulous. “Your mom isn’t even here and she’s guilt tripping us.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Progress is made. A curtain is pulled back.
> 
>  
> 
> “Hey. What can I do for you?”
> 
> There was something strange about the greeting, though Sebastian didn’t have the chance to analyze it before Sam was answering her, “Please join our band.”

It turned out that inviting Renee to the saloon was easier said than done. Abigail had been right when she said that the farmer was reserved, barely gone from her property long enough to be seen flitting across town like a ghost and then gone again before you could so much as wave her down. Not that, Sebastian was willing to admit, he was trying particularly hard.

Social anxiety was a pain in the ass sometimes.

Still, the three of them had slowly become more determined the more elusive Renee proved to be, almost as if in answer to a silent challenge. Abigail tried to catch her whenever she stopped at Pierre’s with a load of produce, but getting up early enough to manage that was proving to be something of a challenge. Sam took to spending more and more time on his skateboard around town, figuring she’d come into town at a normal time of day _eventually_.

And Sebastian—well, he wasn’t sure what to do. Renee drifted into his home a few times a week, usually with a box of her latest harvest for Robin to sort through in her arms, a smile on her lips and a wave in Sebastian’s direction. By the time he worked up some semblance of what may pass, in some circles, as the courage to invite her to join their small party at the Stardrop later that week, she’d already be gone. And he’d be left with jittering hands and a tight, tense chest echoing with the faint whispers of failure.

They were saved, eventually, by Robin.

Sam was in Sebastion’s room, pouring over a graphic novel Sebastian was lending him when Robin peeked her head into the room with an apologetic smile at Sebastian, whose head was too filled numbers and sequences and errors to immediately register the intrusion.

“You’re going to kill me,” Robin started, her voice drawing Sebastian’s reluctant gaze. Sam looked up curiously. “But I really need your help, Sebby.”

He narrowed his eyes at her, fingers pausing in their typing. “With what?”

She sighed in relief as if he had already agreed to help—which, he reflected, might as well have been the case—and stepped into the room carrying a bundle of stapled papers and a roll of roughly sketched-out blueprints. “I need you to take these to Renee’s farm while I play damage control in the laboratory.”

“Damage control?” Sebastian had repeated at the same moment that Sam had perked up with a curious ‘Farmgirl?’

Robin cut Sam an amused glance then looked back to her son, a little more reservation in her eyes. “There may or may not have been a teensy fire and some burns that Maru is insisting Dr. Harvey takes a look at. Everyone will be fine,” she continued before Sebastian could voice his mild concern. “It’s fine. We’ve experienced worse in this house. But I need to be here and I already promised I would get these invoice records to Renee today. I don’t want to worry or inconvenience her, you know?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Sam interrupted fluidly, abandoning his comic to snag the papers from Robin’s arms. “You take care of the family emergency and dear old Sebby and I will ensure these get into the right hands.”

Amusement on Robin’s face again and Sebastian dropped his head into his hands. She laughed, thanked Sam, and waved a quick goodbye with the final instructions to Sebastian being that he could help himself to leftovers whenever he pleased. Sam grinned at him. Sebastian grimaced.

“Are we seriously doing this?” he asked after a moment, already expecting the cheery affirmation that came as Sam threw Sebastian’s hoodie at his face and bounced on his toes in ill-contained excitement.

“Abigail’s gonna be so mad we got to her first,” he said as they climbed out of the basement and into the cool spring air, making their way to the backwoods path that led to the farm. “She’s been trying to reset her internal clock for, like, a week now.”

“Great, should I go get her to replace me?” Sebastian asked, only half-joking as he cast a longing glance to the peaceful sanctuary he was leaving. Sam snorted, nudging him with his arm.

“Yeah, that makes total sense,” he retorted. “I’m sure Renee totally won’t be offended when two veritable strangers show up instead of the son of the one woman in town she’s been spending so much time with. That couldn’t be interpreted as a snub at all.”

A dismayed look fell across Sebastian’s features. “I wouldn’t be trying to snub her—”

“I know that,” Sam agrees. “Abby knows that. But would Renee?”

Sam had a point, reluctant though Sebastian was to admit it, and they fell into silence as they walked, Sebastian tense and contemplative, Sam cheery and content. The silence was broken as they rounded the rocky bend in the road, a melody carrying on the wind that had Sam grappling for Sebastian’s sleeve and pulling him to a stop. Sebastian gave him a bewildered stare, met only with a swift shushing motion as he crept forward, hand still tangled in the sleeve of Sebastian’s hoodie and dragging him along.

They approached almost silently and it dawned on Sebastian, as the melody he heard turned into words and the farm came into sight, exactly what it was that got Sam so excited. Renee was there, hands and knees in the dirt, a basket of freshly harvested produce at her side and a song on her lips. It was an old folk song she sang—one that Sebastian could only barely recall—a smile on her face as she tugged at something hidden in the dirt, brushing off the vegetable and tossing it into her basket before moving on down the row to the next one.

“Oh, my god,” Sam hissed, whipping his head to Sebastian then back at Renee as if he wasn’t sure where to look. “She can _sing_ , Seb. Holy fuck, dude!”

Sebastian rolled his eyes, tugging his sleeve away and tucking his hands into his pocket. Her voice rang clean and clear in the air, and Sebastian vaguely admitted to himself that it sounded nice. But it didn’t stop this from being extremely creepy of them, he swiftly decided, and told Sam as much. Sam flapped a hand at him, hissing for him to be quiet and that they’d go in a minute, just chill for a second, okay?

Renee was still singing when Sebastian redirected his attention back to her. She had switched now to using her hoe to break up the patches of dirt, wiping at her dirtied brow with the back of a gloved hand before sprinkling boxed fertilizer into the freshly tilled soil.

The song turned into a wordless tune, hummed to herself as she deposited her hoe and fertilizer on the front steps of the farmhouse, crouching down to rummage in a chest of what looked like various farming tools and supplies. Sam grinned at Sebastian, then turned to call out a greeting before Sebastian had the chance to steel himself or turn tail and run.

Renee looked up, surprise flashing across her face before it slipped away into an easy, friendly expression. She sat back on her heels, returning Sam’s enthusiastic wave with a slightly more reserved one. Her gaze flickered between them, a smile on her lips. “Hey. What can I do for you?”

There was something strange about the greeting, though Sebastian didn’t have the chance to analyze it before Sam was answering her, “Please join our band.”

“Sam!” Sebastian hissed, scandal effusing his tone even as Renee laughed and shook her head.

“Sorry, Sam,” she grinned up at them as they drew close. “I’m afraid farming doesn’t leave very much time for band practice and touring.”

“In this town?” Sam quipped, gesturing widely with one hand. “You’d be surprised.”

“We’re here,” Sebastian interrupted sternly before the conversation could get any more out of hand. “To give you the records my mom pulled. She had an emergency, or she would have come herself.”

“Oh,” Renee frowned as Sam flourished the papers, taking them from him with a frown in Sebastian’s direction. “Is everything okay?”

“It’s fine,” Sam answered as Sebastian shrugged. The furrow in her brow deepened. “No, really, it was just a science-y accident. To quote Robin herself, they’ve had worse. Personally, I’m far more curious about what the hell it is I just lugged through the woods for my secondary, yet no less loved, mother.”

“Sam, please,” Sebastian groaned. Sam grinned at him unabashedly. Renee snickered.

“It’s nothing much,” she said after a moment. “Old plans for the farm, back when my grandfather ran it. We’ve been talking about upgrading the house, might as well start budgeting for the rest of the land too, y’know?”

“Nope,” Sam responded with a pop of his ‘p’, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. “I’ve never budgeted for a thing in my life. That’s an adult thing and adult things terrify me on a metaphysical level.”

“Remind me never to hire you as the farm’s accountant, Sam,” Renee responded, amusement filtering in between her mock-sage tone. Sam nodded seriously.

“A wise decision,” Sam sighed dramatically, swinging an arm across Sebastian’s shoulders. “You’ll have to make do with our resident computer whiz. Numbers are his shtick.”

“Coding doesn’t have that much to do with accounting,” Sebastian protested lightly, glowering when Sam pressed his palm across Sebastian’s lips and gave him a serious stare.

“My dude,” he said. “My buddy. My pal. I love you, but you would starve if you didn’t have me to negotiate the beginnings of your illustrious career at Mauger’s Farm. Now,” he turned back to Renee, who was watching the exchange with no small amount of mirth. “Exactly what is the starting salary?”

Sebastian shrugged off the hands trapping him and stepped away, shooting Sam a menacing glare. “This coming from the man who can’t budget for shit,” he grumbled, earning a sickly sweet smile from Sam and a laugh from Renee. Sebastian ignored the flush creeping up his neck, turning a pointed look in Sam’s direction. “Abigail’s gonna get pissed if we take too long.”

Sam seemed to take the hint, snapping and turning to Renee with a point of his fingers. She blinked up at him, surprised by the sudden attention, and Sam grinned. “And now we reveal our deep, dark secret and the true reason I and my compatriot trekked our way out on this fine morning to assault you with our idiocy,” Sam gestured with wide, grandiose sweeps of his arm and Sebastian briefly wondered how long it would take him to fashion a noose from the drawstrings of his hood.

“Sounds grim,” Renee retorted with a spritely look, finally rising from her crouch, arms hugging the papers in her hands to her chest. “Be careful, I might not invite you back on the farm.”

“Now that,” Sam laughed, “would be both ironic and a damn shame since we’re here to invite you to a dalliance at the local watering hole this evening.”

“Local—” Renee’s expression clouded, then cleared with understanding. “The Stardrop?”

“That would be the one!” Sam cheered, nudging Sebastian with his elbow. “See? I told you she’d be smart enough to put it together, I don’t know why you were so worried.

Sebastian flinched in alarm, “I wasn’t—” his jaw clenched at the teasing grin on Sam’s lips. “You’re an idiot, Sam.”

“Aw, love you too, sweetie,” Sam crooned, batting his lashes at Sebastian with a wink before turning back to the farmer. “So, what do ya say? Put up with our dumb mugs for awhile?”

Renee hesitated, looking out at the farm with a faint frown. “I don’t know,” she started softly. “I have a lot of work to do here.”

“We stay pretty late,” Sebastian surprised even himself with how quickly he interrupted. He hoped, viciously, that his face wasn’t too red. “You can’t have all that much you can do after dark, can you?”

“An excellent point!” Sam agreed enthusiastically. “Besides, all we’ll be doing is drinking and playing pool. Or, in my case, losing at pool. Nothing strenuous, so you can get right back to the whole adulting thing in the morning. Also,” he continued before Renee could get a word in edgewise, “please say yes because if you don’t Abigail might cut off our balls for fucking this up and I don’t know about Sebastian but I’m kind of attached to mine at this point.”

Renee snorted on a laugh, pressing the back edge of her gloved hand to her mouth and shaking her head. “Alright,” she said after a moment, laughing again when Sam punched the air with both fists in victory. “I could use a hot meal that wasn’t cooked in a microwave, anyway.”

“That’s the spirit,” Sam grinned, stepping off the veranda backward. Sebastian rolled his eyes, following after Sam with a small wave goodbye in Renee’s direction. Sam called cheerfully as they threaded their way back towards town, “See you at eight!”

 

 

Eight came around quickly and so did Renee, still dusty from the farm, insisting on buying everyone a round of Gus’ zucchini fritters. They probably would have put up a bigger protest if it weren’t for how good that marinara sauce was.

“What was your grandpa like?” Abigail asked, popping the last fritter into her mouth and tucking her legs beneath her as she curled onto the couch next to Renee. Sebastian glanced up from chalking his cue stick, catching Renee’s look of surprise before it was hidden by her beer glass. “After exploring the farm ruins so often over the years, I think I might have worked him up into this omnipresent druid warlock in my head and my therapist tells me that’s an unhealthy perspective. Or they would, if Pelican Town had a licensed therapist."

Sam let out a string of expletives, drawing the attention of the party as the cue ball spun wildly out of control and slammed into a corner pocket without so much as grazing a single target.

“Holy shit,” Renee murmured after a moment of awed silence. “You weren’t exaggerating about being bad at pool, were you?”

Sam shot her a baleful glance. “It is a curse and a burden.”

“Honestly,” Abigail sighed. “I’ve tried to convince him to give it up, but he’s determined to hold on to the pipe dream of beating Seb at his own game.”

“Hey,” Sam leaned against the pool table, pressing a hand to his chest mock-hurt. “Everybody’s gotta have a dream, sweet Abigail o’ mine.”

Sebastian froze in his attempt to reset the billiards, blinking a little too hard at the familiarity of the words. When he dared to look her way, Renee only seemed mildly amused by the exchange, and Sebastian wondered at the strange charge he felt surging in his fingertips when he finally stepped back.

Abigail was already drawing Renee’s attention back when Sam stepped up for the break shot.

“So _was_ your grandpa a druid warlock or are my dreams as shot as Sam’s are?” Abigail stuck her tongue out at Sam’s indignant protest, flashing a smile and wink at Renee when Sebastian prodded him back to the game at hand.

“Well, maybe not an _omnipresent_ one,” Renee chuckled. “But he was pretty magical to me. And he managed to keep an herb garden alive and thriving in a six-story walkup in the heart of Zuzu City, so druidry is a strong possibility.”

“I knew it,” Abigail mock-whispered dramatically. “Magic is _real_ , y’all.”

“Unless there’s a wizard of billiards about to impart to me the great knowledge of the universe,” Sam responded, scowling at the table in consternation, “I don’t want to hear it.”

“There is a wizard of billiards,” Sebastian said with a smirk, smacking the end of his stick smoothly into his fourth shot in a row. “You’re playing against him.”

“Oh, haha.”

“Anyways,” Abigail rolled her eyes at them. “Grandpa Mauger. Confirmed druid. Not omnipresent.”

“That we know,” Sam added helpfully.

“That we know,” Abigail agreed sagely. “What else?”

Renee shrugged. Her cheeks were beginning to ruddy—from the alcohol, the heat of the room, or the conversation topic, Sebastian couldn’t tell—and the dim light of bar’s backroom shadowed her eyes as she watched the game play out in front of her. “Well, what do you want to know?”

“Shit, don’t give her that power,” Sam laughed. “She will wring you for every last embarrassing detail you have to hi—ow! Fuck, Sebastian!” Sam pulled away from the table, shaking his hand wildly as if that would dissipate the pain of having a heavy ball smash his fingers. Sebastian rolled his eyes.

“Maybe next time don’t put your hand in the way of my shot.” Sebastian retorted, only vaguely annoyed that Sam’s hand had broken his streak. Abigail laughed at Sam, quipping that it served him right for defaming her character, and Sam pouted.

“I should get an advantage for being injured.”

“No.”

“But it’s my lucky pool hand!”

“No.”

“God, why am I friends with you?” Sam grumbled, finally moving to take his next shot, clearly not as injured as he liked to pretend. Sebastian smirked, leaning against the wall to watch, and Abigail turned back to Renee with a glint in her eye.

“To be perfectly fair,” she said, grinning at the farmer a little wildly, “I don’t really have a filter. So it’s very likely that I’ll end up asking you some very insensitive questions and then you might get mad which would suck because, as you can tell, these numbskulls are all I got for entertainment in this town. And that’s not saying much.”

Sebastian glared at her. “Ass.”

“Takes one to know one,” Abigail batted her lashes and waggled her fingers, prompting Sebastian to turn away with a roll of his eyes. Renee breathed a laugh.

“Well,” Renee said after a moment, tilting her head to the ceiling as if in deep thought. “How about this? You can ask me whatever you want to know and if, for whatever reason, I _do_ get offended, then I promise not to throw my lukewarm beer in your face.”

Abigail rubbed her chin thoughtfully. “You strike a hard bargain, Mauger. I accept.” She grinned, “Question one! How old was your grandpa? Because he seemed super young to me and I’m not sure my brain could take learning that both magic and immortality are obtainable in my lifetime.”

“Considering the reason I’m even here, I think you’re safe on that front,” Renee laughed, a little wry. “But he was pretty young, I guess. He had my mother as a teenager and she had me in her early twenties, so you can probably do the math. She would have grown up here in Pelican Town, actually, but Grandma and Grandpa divorced long before I was even a thought in anyone’s head.”

“Did your mom never marry? You still have the Mauger name.”

Renee hesitated. Abigail shifted back in her seat, raising her arms as if to the fend off a sudden rain of alcohol, and Renee shook her head with a grin. “She did. I changed it back when my father got arrested.”

The words were said casually, weaving and dropping through the air with a near chilling disregard. The room was eerily quiet for a moment. Sebastian straightened, eyeing Renee with a low thrum of trepidation coiling in his stomach. She seemed unfazed by the tension, feet stretched out on the hardwood, the sloped lines of her shoulders relaxed and a faint smile still on her lips. He didn’t bother looking at her eyes.

Abigail blew out a breath. “Is that why Mr. Mauger left the farm?”

Renee tilted her glass at Abigail in acknowledgment. “My mom kind of fell apart after the arrest. She couldn’t take care of me and keep herself sane at the same time, so Grandpa came down to help care for me. I don’t blame her, but I still feel kind of sad about it,” she smiled. “He loved it here. He didn’t feel the same way about Zuzu.”

“Fuck,” Sam whistled, rubbing a hand through his gelled hair. “That sucks. I’m sorry.”

“Thanks,” Renee shrugged. “But it was a long time ago. I don’t remember most of it.”

 

It could have been a lie, Sebastian would think to himself as the days went by. She could have been lying to them, to shield herself from delving too deep into a broken past they couldn’t begin to fathom. He hoped, for reasons he couldn’t quite understand, that she was telling the truth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Farmer-Is-Invited-Into-The-Band trope is practically a rite of passage at this point.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A gift is given. A dance is had and not had.
> 
>  
> 
> There was no way that she knew what the others thought of her. If she did, he was certain he would have seen something like doubt flicker in her eyes when he had asked her to stay.

The weeks passed by slowly.

Renee became a regular fixture on Friday nights, always insisting to buy the first round of beer or appetizers, sitting on the couch next to Abigail and laughing at their antics. No one seemed quite able to broach the topic of her past again. Sam had tried, the second week, only to swiftly rework his question into something about Abigail’s quest to beat Journey of the Prairie King the moment Renee had turned her eyes towards him.

“I don’t know, man,” he had sighed to Sebastian later that evening, as they stepped out into the cool evening air and begun the trek towards Sam’s house. The stars were bright overhead, illuminating the worn cobblestone as they walked. “I get the feeling she’d tell us if we asked. But then what?”

And that, Sebastian thought, was the problem. Renee Mauger was a monkey wrench in the careful machinations of Pelican Town. She was unpredictable in a town that had become nothing but predictable in the years Sebastian had been alive. She climbed into abandoned mine shafts, reworked forgotten land, gave dandelions to Linus and leeks to George, and stopped to speak with Shane nearly every day. Or tried to, at least. Which is more than Sebastian could say he’d ever done.

It was clear that the town was as baffled by her as Sebastian and his friends were. They were nothing but kind to her—of course, they were, she was Mr. Mauger’s granddaughter and a new member of the community, it would be an affront to their sensibilities if they weren’t—but Sebastian could still hear the whispers on the wind about the peculiar new farmer

Leah said she once saw her headed in the direction of the old, run-down stone tower in the hearty depths of the forest. Pierre said she avoided walking the path near Joja Mart and had refused Morris’ coupon soliciting when no one else had. Haley caught her staring at the abandoned community center more times than she could count. Harvey found her passed out in the backwoods once, covered in slime and dirt and exhausted.

 _Something is strange about that girl_ , they would whisper to one another. _I can’t put my finger on it, but something._

The Egg Festival came and went—Abigail won the egg hunt again, like always, Renee grinning and handing her eggs to Jasper and Vincent with a shrug—and the days trudged on. If Renee was aware of the subtle glances and hushed tones whenever she walked into a room, she didn’t show it. Sebastian would even be inclined to believe she went out of her way to ignore it if the gifts and birthday presents she gave the villagers from her farm were any indication.

Until the day she stood in front of him, pitch-black dirt smeared on her cheeks, pickaxe slung over her shoulder, and the cold weight of a Frozen Tear in his palm. His jaw felt slack.

“I hope that’s the right one,” she said, wetting her lips with a swipe of her tongue. “Robin said you liked Frozen Tears and I already had more than enough, so.” She finished with a shrug of her shoulders, casting her glance over the mountainside lake. The light was dimming as the sun began to set, her facial features growing shadowed.

“It’s right,” he said after a moment, the words hanging awkward in the air. “Thank you. I don’t know what to say.”

She shrugged again. “Don’t mention it.”

They were silent a moment and then Sebastian spoke, curious, “What did you need Frozen Tears for?”

He wouldn’t have begrudged her if she had said it was for her own personal collection. Most of the villagers liked—even loved—the gems and minerals found deep under the earth. And while he had never come across anyone who liked these particular gems as much as he did before, he figured it wasn’t too unlikely that the stranger from the city might.

“Oh, well,” she shot him a smile, barely visible. Crickets were singing beneath their feet. “Donations to the museum and all.”

Ah. “So you’re the one who’s got Gunther walking on air, then.”

Renee laughed. “I don’t know about walking on air,” she said. “But I’m glad if he’s happy. It makes me happy, after all. Empty museums are just inherently depressing, you know?”

He didn’t, but he didn’t voice it. It struck him, as they grew into a companionable silence, that this was the first time that they had spent in one another’s company without anyone else to buffer the conversation. She hefted the pickaxe off her shoulder, dropping it to the ground and leaning against its hilt as she kicked her shoes and socks off. He watched as she sat on the bank, dipping her ankles into the water with a satisfied sigh.

“My feet are killing me. I don’t think I walked half this much even in the city. There’s no way I’m wearing heels tomorrow,” she cocked him a smile over her shoulder, brushing her hair behind her ear. “What about you? You going to the dance?”

“The Flower Dance?” Sebastian sighed when she nodded. “Unfortunately.”

“Not a fan of dances or of flowers?” she asked, amusement winding around her voice. He snorted.

“Neither. Even less of a fan of the fashion associated.”

“Fashion?” Renee sat up, legs kicking up a small splash as she half-turned to see him better. “Oh, my god, are there  _costumes_ involved?”

Sebastian scrubbed his face with his free hand, groaning. “As much as I wish otherwise,” he admitted. “Emily made them, which wouldn’t be bad except Lewis insisted on designing them based on ‘Pelican Town’s rich history.’ So the men are all dressed in blue jumpsuits to represent the miners and the women in white dresses to represent—Yoba, I don’t know, virgin brides or something.”

“ _Ew,_ ” Renee laughed. “That is the worst, why do people go along with it?”

Sebastian shrugged. “It’s tradition and Gus always caters, so the food is both free and good. Plus, we only have to dress like that for one dance and then it’s over, so it’s not too bad. Still, wish I could burn the clothes.”

“I can only imagine,” she laughed, pulling her feet out of the lake and stooping to pick up her shoes with one hand and her pickaxe with the other. “If they aren’t as bad as they are in my head, I’m going to be severely disappointed.”

“Trust me, they’re worse.”

She laughed again, raising her boots in farewell as she turned away. The weight of the Frozen Tear in his palm was heavy as he watched her go, swiping his thumb against the cool, smooth surface. She was halfway to the backwoods when he called to her.

“You sure you don’t want to stay for dinner?” he asked when she had paused long enough for him to catch up, gesturing towards the house in indication. “I’m sure mom wouldn’t mind.”

In fact, he was certain she would be thrilled, though he decided against telling Renee that.

The light from the house illuminated her face in a soft, warm glow as her eyes flickered between him and the house. She bit her lip, shuffled with her backpack, sighed. “No,” she replied after a moment, sounding like she regretted the words even as she said them, “Much as I wish I could, I’m going to need to get up early tomorrow to take care of the crops before the dance. And I’m already exhausted.”

Sebastian was nodding before she had even finished speaking. “That’s fine. Some other time?”

“Yeah,” she smiled, half-turning to leave. “Some other time.”

There was no way, he thought as he watched her leave, lighting the cigarette he had been too nervous to smoke in front of a stranger and placing it between his lips. There was no way that she knew what the others thought of her. If she did, he was certain he would have seen something like doubt flicker in her eyes when he had asked her to stay.

He wondered what it would take to make those dead eyes come alive.

He wondered if he could be the one to revive them. And then he squashed the thought, much the same way he squashed the butt of his cigarette into the dirt beneath his heel, and went inside as Robin called him to dinner.

 

 

The morning dawned with fog and golden light when Sebastian crawled out from the basement, hair still mussed from sleep. Maru fell in step beside him as the family left the carpenter’s shop, heading down the path towards town. It was strange walking that way—in years past, they had cut through the backwoods and down the abandoned farm fields to reach the woods—but the presence of Renee had led to a collective decision that it would be rude, somehow, to intrude on the private property so early in the morning. And it certainly was early. Earlier than Sebastian would have liked, in any case.

The sun was only beginning to stretch across the sky, birds calling hellos to one another as dewdrops clung to blades of grass and wet the hems of pants and skirts that brushed the foliage. It was Robin’s turn, this year, to help set up the decorations for the dance, and she had swiftly enlisted her family’s assistance in the matter. Protests had fallen on deaf ears, met with a steely cool gaze and hard knocks on bedroom doors the morning of.

So Sebastian trudged, blinking sleep from his eyes, grunting with effort at every box of garland and banners dropped in his arms. The hours passed quickly as they worked, grateful that the late spring air was still cool enough to stay their sweat, setting up tables and archways gracefully decorated with trailing sweet potato vines, coral red geraniums, sweet alyssum, and purple-petaled petunias that would have put even Granny Evelyn’s gardens to shame.

The dancing floor was sectioned off by hedges of honeysuckle and wisteria, the sweet scent cut by the savory foods Gus had placed on the buffet table between artfully arranged bouquets of dried flowers and herbs.

It was, Sebastian had been willing to admit when the work had finished and he was allowed to slink off to a secluded corner with a glass of sweet wine for his efforts, marginally worth it when the villagers started to arrive and stared in wonder at the tubs of flowers and ivy spilling along the festival ground. His mother had a knack for making her visions realities, he supposed, which only served to make it rather alarming when said visions involved him.

Sam and Abigail arrived only shortly after they were done setting up, Abigail rolling her eyes as Pierre ducked behind his stall to Caroline’s dismay and Sam grinning in ill-contained joy at the sheer amount of foliage surrounding them.

“Dude,” Sam cried as they joined him in his corner behind the buffet. “I think your mother might be a faerie. Like, a really buff faerie who likes wood.”

Sebastian raised his eyebrows. “What would that even make me?”

“Adopted,” Abigail responded swiftly, pouring herself her own glass of wine. “She felt sorry for your goblin ass and adopted you as a babe. The woman is a saint and we should all strive to be more like her.”

Sebastian glowered at them both, raising his cup to lips as he muttered, “You know I helped her set this all up, right?”

“Oh, of course,” Abigail simpered at him, “under extreme duress, I’m sure.”

“Like you would have jumped for joy at the chance.”

“I would have.” Sam shrugged at the twin stares he received. “What? Just because my nose disagrees doesn’t mean I hate flowers. I like flowers. Flowers are neat.”

“Yeah, well,” Abigail raised her cup in greeting towards Leah and Elliott, who had arrived together and called hello across the field to them. “I wouldn’t be caught dead helping put together a festival that makes me _dance_ _in front of the entire town_. God, it’s like a bad dream come to life. I don’t know why we do it.”

“You could just not come,” Sebastian suggested. Abigail sighed at him.

“I wish. I tried a couple years ago and my mom started crying. Like, actually crying with real tears,” she wrinkled her nose, bewilderment creeping into her face as she thought about it. “I mean, I don’t get it, it’s like she thinks I’m going to turn into this huge delinquent and wind up in jail or whatever just because I’m not a carbon copy of her. It’s wild.”

“Well, to be fair,” Sam interjected. “There was that one time in Zuzu where we almost—”

He was cut off by her hand slamming across his lips. “We agreed to never mention that again,” she hissed at him, looking around wildly as if the entire town was listening in. They might have been, but Sebastian wasn’t paying attention any longer. His eyeline had been drawn across the clearing to the entrance of the festival grounds where someone had called out a hearty ‘morning, farmer!’ and there it had stayed, entranced by what he saw.

Renee had, apparently, taken the festival a little more seriously than he thought she had only the night before. Her hair was swept up with a ring of daffodils and daisies, cascading in the back over bare shoulders like a waterfall. Her dress wasn’t the respectable white of a virgin bride but a dusty yellow with white trim and a flowing skirt that came to a stop at her ankles. She wasn’t wearing heels, he noted, but soft brown boots dusted with dirt.

He had the sneaking suspicion that she farmed in those boots.

In the back of his mind, in a place he refused to acknowledge and locked away with a shove and a slam and a desperate rush of blood in his ears, he thought somewhat wildly that Yoba must have sent an angel to bless the festivities. She was too beautiful, leaning against Pierre’s stand and pointing excitedly at a scarecrow surrounded by flowers, to be anything so plain and boring as a human.

Abigail pinched his side and he yelped, glaring. She was grinning.

“You should ask her to dance, goblin-boy,” she said, sipping her wine merrily. Sebastian’s glower darkened.

“You’re worse than my mom.”

Sam looked between them, pleasantly confused. “Who are we talking about?”

“I’m just saying,” Abigail continued, ignoring Sam entirely. “You’d have a pretty good shot at a yes. I mean, who else is going to ask her?”

“Great pep talk,” Sebastian rolled his eyes. Sam repeated his question a couple more times. “I’m not asking her. I don’t want to ask her. The dance sucks, anyway, you’re just trying to get out of it.”

“Guilty as charged,” Abigail shrugged unrepentantly. “You should still ask her.”

“No.”

“ _Guys,_ ” Sam whined, finally drawing their attention. “Who the fuck are we talking about?”

“Yeah,” said a fourth voice, poking their head over Sam’s shoulder with a smile. “Who the fuck are we talking about?”

“Renee,” Abigail grinned, flashing her a smile. Renee was carrying the scarecrow under her arm and Sebastian willed his flush back down, averting his gaze. “You are looking radiant this awful, terrible and accursed morning. Who’s your friend?”

“Oh, her?” Renee hefted the scarecrow up proudly. “I’m calling her Sally. Sally has seen some shit in her lifetime. You can tell by the look in her cold, dead button eyes.”

 _Like yours?_ Sebastian almost asked, staying his voice only by the laughter of Abigail and Sam. Sally’s straw hair rustled in the breeze.

“What kind of horrors could a scarecrow see in their lifetime?” Abigail continued to laugh, passing Renee a fresh cup of wine that she cheerfully accepted.

“I mean,” Renee grinned at them, “have you _seen_ The Birds? Alfred Hitchcock got it right, those crows are terrifying and far too smart for their own good. Sally’s lost some good friends to the crows. I’d suggest therapy to her, but my source says that Pelican Town doesn’t have a licensed therapist.”

The banter was halted as Emily called Renee over to the dance floor, most likely to fawn over the dress. Abigail snagged Sally from Renee’s hands as she passed, earning a laugh and a warning to keep her safe, and waggled the straw-stuffed face at Sebastian when Renee was out of eyesight. He shoved it away, heat rising in his cheeks.

“Oh,” Sam said, realization dawning in his face. A sly look filtered between his eyes. “Yeah, you should ask her to dance.”

 

 

Sebastian did not ask her to dance.

He overheard, at some point during the festival, Leah urging Renee to ask someone to dance. It was a tradition, she said, and anybody would be lucky to dance with the farmer. Renee had laughed the words away, flapping her hands and insisting that she didn’t know the steps and wasn’t close enough to anyone to comfortably make the request. Leah had pouted, insisting that she would have happily danced with Renee if she weren’t already paired with Elliot.

“Don’t worry about it,” Renee had said. “Maybe next year.”

Maybe next year. The words rang strangely in Sebastian’s ears. _Maybe next year._ It was the first time he had been confronted with Renee Mauger in the long term. She had been here only a few months, her presence still a topic of gossip, and the idea that anyone wanted to stay in the valley—especially someone so young—felt strange and new.

Everyone in the valley had dreams of leaving. Sebastian to the city, Abigail on adventure, Sam on tour, Alex as a pro gridballer, Haley and Emily as a fashion designing duo, Penny as a teacher, Maru in pursuit of her STEM degree. Even Elliott and Leah—who had come to the valley for their own reasons—weren’t expected to settle down any time soon. The villagers seemed to accept that most of the younger blood would move on one day, that Pelican Town was a dying community and one of the last of its kind.

Pelican Town was temporary. And yet Renee seemed determined to stay.

It was bewildering. And yet, as Sebastian was tugged and prodded and needled into his costume and then into line for the dance, he found that he couldn’t picture her doing anything else. Maybe it was because farming was all he had ever seen her do, or maybe it had more to do with her cautious barely-there warnings against the city, but she seemed to fit in Stardew Valley like a missing piece to a puzzle no one even noticed was there. The presence of a farmer in the sleepy town seemed _right_ , even as her presence sent sparks up and down the rumor mill, like the earth itself was suddenly thrumming with some untapped force.

In the scant few months she had integrated herself in the community, Sebastian could practically taste the hope she had instilled into the flower-sweet ocean air.

It was odd that a stranger, this short city-slick girl with the easy laugh and the empty eyes, could do so much in so little time. It was odder still how his heart seemed to thud harder and faster than usual in his chest when he caught her amused glance, just behind the row of thickets, standing next to Shane and murmuring something about ‘sickeningly blue’ that made the surly man smirk. Sebastian pressed a sweaty palm to his chest, breaking the evenly matched pace of the dance and earning a glare from Lewis, and forced himself to focus on the arch expression that had crossed Abigail’s face.

He was lucky that she didn’t bring it up after the dance was over, but that probably had something to do with the way Renee had bombarded them before they could run off to change out of the clothes, the back of her hand pressed to lips as if to hide her grin.

“Holy shit,” she breathed, to which Abigail and Sebastian grimaced. “I am grieving for you both, I really am.”

“Well, grieve a little harder,” Abigail shot her a mock-glare, shaking her head in exasperation when Renee only snickered. “Jesus. Fine. Mock us. Next year it’ll be you in the dress and I can go flirt with the normies.”

Renee laughed. “Sure, sure. Good luck with that.”

Abigail flipped her off.

When he and the rest of the dancers returned, Renee had already left the party.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know Shane usually dances with Emily but *shrug emoji*


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Questions are asked. A disaster strikes.
> 
>  
> 
> Abigail leaned forward, nearly eager with the sudden information they had been gifted, and hissed, “You worked at a Joja Mart?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brief mention of abuse in this chapter, y’all! It’s very vague but if you’d like to skip all the same, merely scroll past to the next scene change.

Summer came hot and heavy that year, the sun beating across the town with dogged heat. Humidity came rolling in from the sea, cut back only by intermittent thunderstorms. Cicada song filled the evening air, calling in dances of fireflies and mosquitoes skittering across the lake.

It was, in a word, _fucking_ miserable.

Although Sam didn’t seem to mind the insufferableness of the season—probably to do with the fact that he, himself, was insufferable—Abigail and Sebastian commiserated often over their hatred for the summer months. They longed for the cool, dark days of autumn and dreary rain when the scent of sweat and sunscreen would be replaced with that of hay and earth.

Renee, when asked for her opinion, merely shrugged. “It’s not ideal for farming,” she said, pressing her hand to her mouth in what Sebastian was beginning to notice was a nervous tick. He wondered if she was aware of it. “I have to get up earlier if I want to beat the heat, and the crops are needing double the water to keep from wilting. I wouldn’t mind it, really, but the sprinkler system needs to be repiped so most of it has to be done by hand which is really cutting into my ability to clear the debris off the land at a reasonable time of day.”

Even Sam looked shocked.

“Why the fuck are you a farmer?” He asked, biting viciously into a pepper popper and unabashedly speaking with his mouth full of breaded cheese and red pepper. Abigail shoved his arm in disgust, which he ignored. “It sounds even more miserable than Joja.”

“It’s not,” Renee responded swiftly. “But it can be pretty hard work sometimes, I’ll give you that.”

“How would you even know?” Sam teased her, having swallowed his food with a swig of beer to wash it down. “As far as I know, you’ve never stepped foot in the Mart. Unless you’re going when I’m off shift which, by the way, rude. I am way too bored and paid way too little to not be visited by my favorite farmer while I pretend to work.”

“I think you’re supposed to actually work, Sam,” Renee retorted, snagging the basket of poppers away when he tried to reach for them. Abigail crowed in delight while Sam pouted at them, bereft at his lack of deep-fried goods. “In any case, I’m not stepping foot in another Joja Mart ever again. I worked for them for three years and that was more than enough to last a lifetime.”

Sebastian was certain you could have heard a pin drop for how quiet it had gotten, despite the relative busyness of the saloon on a Friday night. Abigail leaned forward, nearly eager with the sudden information they had been gifted, and hissed, “You worked at a Joja Mart?”

“Well, no,” Renee corrected, looking faintly sheepish as she set the poppers down. “I was the Executive Manager of the Customer Service department at Zuzu City headquarters. I never worked in an actual Mart before.”

“This is earth-shattering information, Renee Mauger,” Abigail said, half-joking, gesturing at Sam’s slack face in indication. “You’ve broken Sam. Seb can’t even talk.”

“To be fair,” Sebastian interjected, “I don’t talk very much.”

Abigail shoved a finger in his face, “Hush. We’re not talking about you, emo-boy.”

“You actually were—“

“Hush.”

Renee laughed. “Honestly, it’s not that big of a deal. I worked for a megacorp. I hated the megacorp. I quit and ran away to live on a farm.”

“You,” Sam pulled himself together, pointing a finger at Renee’s amused faced, “are a walking, breathing Hallmark movie. What the fuck. Why is this the first time we’ve heard about this?"

Renee shrugged, picking up the basket of poppers and passing them to Sebastian. “You never asked?”

Abigail cut Sebastian a glance, a flicker of something dark and questioning in the wild depths of her eyes. Sebastian stared back, unblinking, determined not to encourage or discourage whatever idea or passing fancy that had deigned to grace the purple haired girl’s mind. She narrowed her eyes at him, determination flashing in the set of her mouth, and turned back to Renee with almost lightning speed.

“Why was your father arrested?”

Renee grew still, blinking at Abigail in surprise. Sebastian felt a sudden urge to flee, or possibly to shove Abigail’s mouth full of poppers so she couldn’t speak again. Sam looked like he was about to pass out from nerves. And then Renee had tilted her head back and laughed, loud and long, cutting the tension with all the ease of a sharp knife.

“Fuck,” she said after a moment, grinning and swiping at her eyes. “I guess I asked for that one. Okay,” she took a deep breath, some of the mirth falling from her mouth. “I don’t mind telling you, but it’s kind of grim. So, if you’re okay with that,” she shrugged.

Abigail looked at Sam and Sebastian, turning back to Renee with a nod. Renee didn’t continue, waiting until Sam and Sebastian had both nodded their own agreement before humming and reaching for the poppers again.

It seemed to Sebastian that she wanted something for her hands to do more than she wanted another popper, for the way she stared down at the basket when it was in her grasp.

“I don’t remember much of it,” she warned at first. “I was pretty young at the time. Grandpa told me most of it when I got older.”

 _She’s lying._ The conviction of the thought surprised him, even as he was certain of its truth. There was no indication, in her words or her face, that she was speaking anything less than the truth. He hardly knew her well enough to be so certain.

And yet.

“My parents used to fight a lot,” she was saying. “We lived in an apartment building where the walls were thin and I guess the neighbors were used to hearing the yelling because, for a long time, nothing happened. Just lots of fighting. Then one day things got really bad. There was more screaming than usual, I guess, and then there was a knock at the door and suddenly all these police officers were inside,” she stopped to give a shrug, flashing a mirthless smile at the trio. “ _Apparently_ my father had taken me out of school for, like, a week and no one could get in touch with either of my parents. One of the neighbors caught wind of that, put two and two together, came out with four, and called the cops.

“My mom called Grandpa as soon as she could. It was going to be temporary, at first, but she was kind of a mess. So she went to go live with my Grandmother while I stayed with Grandpa and the rest, as they say, is history.”

Sam sat back in his seat, a dumbfounded expression creeping across his face. “What happened to your dad? Is he still in jail?”

“Mm,” Renee hummed, having finally bit into one of the poppers, and swallowed before answering, “no. There were a bunch of restraining orders put in place and the beginnings of a trial, but then he got really sick. Lung cancer. He didn’t survive for more than a few months.”

The pack of cigarettes in Sebastian’s back pocket felt oddly heavy. In the past weeks he had grown comfortable enough to smoke in Renee’s presence and, while she had never seemed to mind before, he wondered how often the acrid scent drew unpleasant memories into stark remembrance.

“I’m sorry.” It was Abigail who spoke now, her words quiet and small, a blanket apology for more than one matter at hand. Regret had slunk into her eyes, tempering the ever-present storm of mischief. The faint smile on Renee’s face grew warm.

“Don’t be,” Renee responded. “It was a long time ago. I’m here now.”

“I shouldn’t have pried.”

Renee snorted, disbelief pulling at the corners of her mouth. “No, don’t start that nonsense,” she raised a finger to poke at Abigail’s temple. “If I didn’t want to tell you, I wouldn’t have. Period. I’m an open book, you guys,” she shot a look at Sam and Sebastian before redirecting her attention to the still-regretful looking Abigail. “I know I don’t talk about myself much, but that doesn’t mean I won’t or don’t want to. If you have questions, I’m happy to answer them.

“I’ll let you know if it’s too much.”

They had no choice but to believe her.

 

 

The storms were the worst part. The rain was no issue for Sebastian, it was the thunder and lightning that made the summer days not just unbearable but dangerous, as well. Maybe it was the mountainous terrain, but Pelican Town had an eerie knack for frequent lightning strikes. Enough that everyone in town had learned to set lightning rods in their backyards, protecting homes and people from the blue bolts that pierced the ground.

Everyone except for Renee, that was.

She showed up on the doorstep one morning, a box of brown and black vegetables still wet from the rain in hand, her face crumpled from the weight of the disaster. Robin had taken one look at the damp farmer and ordered her into the kitchen, calling down to the basement for Sebastian to come upstairs with a fresh set of towels before abandoning her post at the front desk. When Sebastian found them, Renee was staring at the box in her lap, dripping puddles onto the tile while Robin dunked a bag of tea into a steaming mug of water and slid it across the table.

“I thought lightning strikes were rare,” Renee said, accepting the towel she was handed with wordless thanks. She wrapped it around her shoulders as Robin pulled the box from grasp, leaving her to wrap her hands around the warm tea. “It sounded close, but I didn’t think it was _this_ close.”

“Did any of the crops survive?”

Renee laughed. It sounded wet. “Did you know there’s a thing called lightning injury?” she asked. “I didn’t. Apparently, plants, when they aren’t directly hit, can show signs of disease a few days after a lightning strike. Ruins all of the crops. I won’t even know until I go to harvest them and by then it will be too late.”

She pressed a hand to her forehead, bending low to breathe in the herbed scent of her tea. Sebastian felt awkward, standing in the kitchen doorway, as if he were intruding upon something he ought not see. Robin broke the tension with a sigh, dumping the scorched vegetables into the trash and moving to sit across the table from Renee.

“Okay,” she said, in what Sebastian could only describe as her Mother in Crisis Mode voice. “Let’s look at this logically. Food. How are you going to eat?”

Renee hesitated, thinking. “Leah keeps talking about foraging in the forest. I could ask her for tips. Willy taught me to fish. Whatever I don’t eat I can sell.”

“That’s a start,” Robin nodded. “Do you have an emergency budget?”

“A few thousand,” Renee grimaced, a flush rising in her cheeks. “I was trying to save up for the house renovations.”

“We’ll have to put that off,” Robin said, sympathy in her voice. “Do you have enough to start over?”

Renee’s eyes flashed to the wall and back to her tea, shaking her head. “No. Not fully. And this late in the season, I don’t think I’d make a profit even if I did.”

Robin tilted her head, a light shimmering in her eyes as she thought. “You should have enough for a coop.”

“A—” Renee froze, sitting straighter in her seat. Her towel shifted down. Sebastian suppressed the urge to reach forward and tuck it back into place. “That’s out of my budget.”

“Not if you supply me with the lumber and stone,” Robin replied with a shrug and a grin. “That’ll cut the cost by half and leave you with plenty of money left over to purchase the hens from Marnie. You won’t have to worry too much about feed with all that tall grass on the property. Eggs sell well. You can turn them into mayonnaise for even more profit, if you want, I’m sure I have some blueprints for a mayonnaise barrel around here somewhere.”

Renee blew at her tea, sipping at it before sitting back in her seat. “I could double down in the mines,” she said, sounding less like she was conversing with Robin and more as if she were speaking to herself. “If I mine enough ore I can repair the sprinkler system and upgrade my tools before autumn rolls around.” She looked up, catching Sebastian’s eye for a moment.

There was a glimmer in her eyes.

It was small, flickering and frustratingly unknown, dancing in her gaze and rooting him to the spot. She looked away before he could decipher what it meant.

“Alright,” she said to Robin, reaching with one hand to pull the towel back up and clasp it at her neck. She smiled faintly. “How much lumber do you need?”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chicks are hatched. A town worries.
> 
>  
> 
> Shane rolled his eyes, placing the remaining two chicks on the ground with a surprising amount of gentleness. “Then you both have terrible senses of humor.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A quick note; starting Monday I’ll be pulling back to weekly updates, instead of twice weekly. As much as I would like to keep up momentum, my buffer between what I’ve already posted and what I have written is dwindling. We’ll be getting to some meatier, lengthier bits as we approach something resembling the main plot which is exciting! But difficult to churn out quite so fast. So from now on, there will be new chapters every Monday! Happy reading, y’all~

Construction on the farm took less than a week.

Abigail had insisted on going to see the coop and the baby chicks—which she affectionately referred to as “fluff balls” and “chooks”—dragging Sebastian and Sam in her wake. They were only mildly surprised to find Renee sitting outside the coop, a cat snuggled around her shoulders, being lectured by the resident town grump on chicken care.

“I wasn’t planning on leaving them out overnight, Shane,” Renee said, reaching a hand up to scritch behind the ears of the cat butting its head against hers. Shane scowled at her, a trio of yellow—well, fluff balls—in his arms.

“Make sure you don’t,” he replied. “It may not look like it, but the valley is full of predators. Chickens are easy prey.” He paused, eyeing the coop with a frown. “You might do well to have a fence, actually. Big enough to roam, small enough to confine them to one space.”

Renee reached back, pulling the cat from her shoulders and setting it on the ground as she stood. “Fences cost time and money to make,” she said, scooping one of the chicks from Shane’s arms and peering at its peeping face. “Neither of which, I should remind you, I have very much of.”

Shane’s frown deepened. “Are you sure you’re—”

“Oh, hey guys,” Renee cut him off, finally spotting the trio coming towards them. A look of frustration crossed Shane’s face then cleared, leaving the usual mild discontent in its place. Sebastion avoided looking in his eyes.

“What can I do for you?” Renee asked, hands still cradling in the chick. Abigail cooed at it, practically skipping forward, and Renee grinned. “Come to see the new members of the family?”

“Abby here could not be detained from the chooks,” Sam smiled, flicking a glance from Shane to Renee. There was quiet speculation in his face, tempered by the lackadaisical set of his shoulders. “It would be like putting a steak in front of Alex’s dog and expecting him not to lunge for it.”

“As long as she’s more gentle than Dusty,” Renee laughed, depositing the chick in Abigail’s waiting hands, gently repositioning them into a secure grip, “then I don’t mind in the least. Shane here was just lecturing me on chicken facts. Did you know that hens can have sex with a rooster, decide they don’t want the rooster’s babies, and just _eject_ the sperm? I have no idea why I know that now. I don’t even have a rooster.”

“I was trying,” Shane growled at her, “to establish the importance of a pecking order to you.”

Sam snorted. “ _Pecking_ order?”

“See?” Renee crowed triumphantly to an exasperated Shane, pointing towards Sam. “He thinks it’s funny too!”

Shane rolled his eyes, placing the remaining two chicks on the ground with a surprising amount of gentleness. “Then you both have terrible senses of humor.” He straightened, crossing his arms. “I’ll bring by a pamphlet later on the signs of avian flu and other harmful diseases. Memorize it _before_ you lose your entire flock.”

“Yes, sir,” Renee gave a small salute, smiling when Shane rolled his eyes again. “You sure you don’t want to stay for lunch? A drink?”

“Nah,” Shane said after a moment of hesitation, shaking his head. “I gotta get back to Jas. Promised I’d take her to get some ice cream today.”

Renee nodded, “Tell her I said hi.”

Shane grunted, already trudging his way to the southern end of the pasture, stepping beyond piles of rubble and brush that Renee hadn’t quite managed to clear yet. Sam crouched down, bracing a hand against the coop as the cat Renee had abandoned began winding its way between his legs.

“Who’s this fellow?”

“Hm?” Renee turned away from where she had been watching Shane depart, the frown that had begun to tug at her lips disappearing as she caught sight of the affectionate feline. “Ah. That’s Maple. He’s a bit of a love-bug. Marnie brought him by not long after I moved in to help keep vermin away from the crops. Except he mostly just chases butterflies and tries to play with my hoe when I’m trying to work.”

Maple _mrrrp_ ’ed, almost in confirmation, leaping up to balance himself on Sam’s shoulders. Sam let out a small yelp, nearly falling backward, whilst the cat held fast and purred hard. Renee laughed.

“He likes to be up high,” she said, shrugging when Sam sent her a bewildered look.

“I have _allergies.”_

“Then why are you on my farm?” Renee teased, opening the coop’s hatch to corral the young chickens inside. Abigail let out a small noise of disappointment as her fluffy cuddle-buddy was gently pried away. “If you want, you guys can help me name these three. Shane said naming them will help me bond with them. As if I wasn’t in love already.”

“Speaking of Shane,” Abigail said, finally coming out of her silent adorable-induced comatose state. “I didn’t know you two were friends.”

Renee shrugged, “He helped me clear out some of the land in exchange for some of my pepper crops earlier this summer. We split some pizza every once in a while. Drink some beer. He’s a funny guy when you get to know him.”

“You know he’s an alcoholic, right?” Sebastian wasn’t sure what propelled him to ask, but Renee didn’t seem offended by the brusque words. She shrugged for the third time, tossing a handful of seed towards the chicks before closing the hatch.

“I mean,” she said, “sure, I guess. But he isn’t the only one in this town who’s drinking more than their fair share, right?”

No one responded. There was an almost guilty air to the silence, the quiet acknowledgment that people weren’t as happy and healthy in Pelican Town as they all liked to pretend. Renee sighed.

“You can’t force them to stop,” she said, quieter now. “You can’t make them better by force. It doesn’t work like that. Until they're ready, nothing is going to change. And, besides, we may be friends, but I’m not family, y’know? There’s a difference.”

 

 

The conversation filtered away after that. Renee offered to buy them lunch at the saloon, though they refused—Abigail and Sam citing family waiting for them and Sebastian a line of code full of errors that he’d been putting off fixing—and Renee saw them off, a pickaxe slung over her shoulders as she made her way towards the mines.

Sebastian watched until she had disappeared into the cave before he turned and entered the house. Robin was at the front desk, a worried furrow in her brows and a chilled mist in her eyes when she turned them towards him.

“Was that Renee?” She asked, fingers wringing together. “Is she going into the mines again?”

Sebastian shrugged. “Looks like.”

Robin sighed, shoulders slumping as she pressed her fingers to her eyes. “I wish she wouldn’t,” she murmured to her hands. “I know she needs to make money, but it’s so _dangerous_ down there. Remember when Demetrius tried to mine for copper ore samples a few years back? He got swarmed by bats on the second level and had to go to the hospital. I know Renee has gone deeper than that by now. Yoba only knows what she’s had to face down there.”

Sebastian thought of a frozen tear, carefully propped on his desk next to his computer monitor, and frowned. “She seems capable enough. I’ve never heard her complain.”

“Of course you haven’t,” Robin sighed again, mist curling into soft banks of fog. “That girl only complains when it’s too late to help.”

Sebastian led the way to the kitchen, Robin anxiously trailing after him as he pulled a set of mugs from the cupboard and began pouring coffee. “You helped her with the chickens.”

“Yes, well,” Robin made her way to the fridge, pulling out the fixings for ham sandwiches and holding them aloft for Sebastian to see. He nodded and she smiled briefly at him before turning to grab two plates. “I couldn’t help her with the crops, could I? I could have warned her about the lightning. Hell, anyone in town could have. Would have. If she asked.”

Robin made a frustrated noise in the back of her throat, nodding her thanks at Sebastian as he slid her mug across the table, not pausing as she layered cheese and onion and tomato on the bread. “I don’t know why she’s so determined not to accept help.”

Sebastian furrowed his brow. “I don’t know that’s true,” he said, shrugging when Robin looked up at him. “I was just as her farm. Apparently, Shane’s been helping her over there. She pays him with food.”

An amused look crossed Robin’s face as she handed him his sandwich. “Sebastian. Sebby. My son. My sweet honeysuckle. My darling baby angel,” she said, laughing at his growing disgust with every epithet. “How is it that I live in a house full of geniuses and you’re all so very, very dumb?”

“I’m not sure whether I’m supposed to thank you or be insulted right now,” Sebastian mumbled into his sandwich. “I’m leaning towards insulted.”

“Shane’s not helping her.” Robin continued as if he hadn’t interrupted at all. Sebastian looked up her in bewilderment.

“She literally told me—”

“I know,” Robin interjected, “but he’s not. _She’s_ helping _him_. The same way she’s helping everyone else in this town. She’s helping him, Sebby. That’s what she does.”

“I—” Sebastian stopped, looking down at his sandwich. He took a sip of coffee and was silent. Robin shook her head.

“Sebastian,” she waited until he looked up again. “The last time I had decent work—more than just occasional roof patches and furniture repair—was when Leah commissioned that tiny cabin out by the river. And that was years ago. Demetrius, bless his heart, doesn’t pull in that much money for his scientific research. Renee is practically my only patron. And she’s fully aware of it.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Robin said when Sebastian was about to interrupt. “Our bills are getting paid. We’re fine. But her money? The food she keeps bringing up? That’s a huge help, Sebby. I don’t know what we’d do without her.”

Sebastian blew out a sigh, slumping back in his chair, fingers gripped tight around his mug. “I had no idea.”

Robin shrugged. “No reason to talk about it.” She paused, taking a moment to chew and swallow a mouthful of her own sandwich. “She’s a good kid, Sebby. I just don’t want to see her getting hurt.”

“No,” Sebastian agreed, picking at the crust of his sandwich with one hand. Robin smiled at the gesture, then laughed and shook her head.

“Sometimes I forget you used to be a scrawny little kid,” she said when he looked up at her. “And then you start playing with your food the same way that used to drive me crazy when you were four and it all comes flooding back.” Robin sighed, propping her chin in her hand. “Maybe I’m being too much of a mother towards Renee too. She’s an adult. She knows what she’s doing, right?”

Sebastian nodded. “I’m sure she does,” he said, flicking his hair from his eyes with his free hand. “I don’t think she’d begrudge you being a mother towards her, though. Mother is your default setting. She knew what she was getting into.”

Robin snorted, polishing her sandwich off and standing to rinse off her plate. “Cheeky.”

 

 

He wasn’t sure Renee knew what she was doing at all.

The summer continued to pass like molasses, growing more humid and sticky and hot with each subsequent day. The few crops that had survived the lightning strike had wilted in the record high heat and, whilst the chickens grew and gorged themselves on the ample tall grass and grain that ravaged the farm’s land, Renee herself seemed to be growing thinner and more tired with each passing day. Her appearance on Friday nights grew later and later, until almost half-way through the summer when she had arrived only twenty minutes before the Stardrop was to close for the night, grime still smeared across her cheek and hands covered in weeping blisters.

“Jesus,” Abigail had breathed when she caught sight of the farmer, pulling her to sit down and grasping a hand to inspect. Renee smiled a little wearily, not quite brushing Abigail away but clearly uncomfortable with the attention.

“I’m fine,” she assured, accepting the glass of beer Sam pressed onto her with a sigh of contentment as her wounds glanced against the cool of the glass. “I just lost track of time down there. You just get into a groove, y’know?”

“I can say with complete honesty,” Sam retorted, a flickering worry in his gaze that Sebastian was sure was reflected in his own, “that none of us know whatsoever. Renee, are you doing okay?”

Renee peered up at him, the corners of her lips tugging downwards. “Pardon?”

“Far be it from me to be the adult in any situation,” Sam pressed his hand to his chest in a mock-wounded pose, “but I think I speak for everyone present when I say you’re kind of freaking us out here, Renee. Are things really that bad at the farm?”

Amusement trickled into the lines of Renee’s face as she shook her head, gently prying her hand away from Abigail, who had begun lightly massaging at her wrist. “The farm is fine. You’ve seen the farm. I just have a lot to do, is all.”

“Are you sure?” Abigail inquired softly, hand pressing against Renee’s forearm. “Because if you need help with something—”

“I don’t,” Renee cheerfully interrupted, sipping at her beer. “Honestly, guys, I’m just a little tired. And utterly unused to manual labor, apparently,” she flexed a blistered hand at them. “I’ll just hit up Harvey’s in the morning for some ointment. It’s fine.”

The group grew silent, a current of charged concern still weaving through the air. Renee sighed. “Listen,” she said, “I’m not going to lie to you guys. The farm is a mess. The mines are rough. I’m not the best fisherwoman on the planet. All of this is a lot harder than I thought it was going to be when I moved here. But I’m making the best of it. I’m gonna get it together. So don’t worry about me, okay?”

 _Easier said than done_ , Sebastian wanted to say, sipping at his own drink with an ill-contained sigh. Somewhere along the line, he was surprised to note, Renee had become an integral member of their small little group. It was a startling revelation but perhaps—he considered as he drank in the sight of his friends laughing and joking as Renee steered the subject away from herself and towards the latest news on the band she still refused to join—not an entirely unwelcome one.

And if Gus kept the saloon open a little later that night than usual, a smile beneath the breadth of his mustache and a wink in their direction as Sebastian shrugged his jacket on and left the saloon with the rest of the group, no one seemed entirely inclined to mention it.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mischief is made. Lightning strikes twice.
> 
>  
> 
> “You did not put Joja Cola in the community soup,” Sebastian said, almost pleading, suddenly stricken with the thought that he would be expected to consume a soup made out of literal garbage.

The morning of the Luau had dawned with an almost ominous cloud cover, painted red with the rising of the sun. The dogged heat refused to wane—almost seeming to chase the clouds themselves away as the morning turned to afternoon. The scent of sweat and sunscreen and ocean water mingled on the breeze as Sebastian approached the beach, sleeves of his hoodie pushed upwards and hood firmly overhead to block as much sun as possible. A thin line of sweat was already coating his arms, worsening as he passed by the open flames underneath both soup and spit roasts, making a beeline towards the welcoming shade provided by the docks.

Sam and Abigail had already managed to find themselves a spot in said shade, Sam sprawled out on the sand watching the festivities from behind his sunglasses and Abigail leaning against the wooden post of the dock, pressing her hair into a ponytail high on her head.

“Why the fuck,” Abigail said in her customary and annual Luau-inspired greeting as Sebastian drew near, “are we having soup on the hottest _fucking_ day of the year? Like, who planned this? Why are they torturing us?”

“To be fair,” Sam pointed a finger in the air, waggling it about lazily. “It probably wasn’t this hot a hundred years ago or whatever the fuck. Climate change. Global warming. It is a curse and will destroy us all long before whatever poison it is we’re about to guzzle down our throats.”

“Shut up,” Sebastian kicked a clump of seaweed at the blond, smirking as he spluttered when it landed with a splat against his cheek. “You are an outlier who enjoys getting sunburnt and therefore are not allowed to commiserate in our misery.”

“Fucker,” Sam laughed, tossing the seaweed back at Sebastian and missing, scrubbing the wet sand from his cheek. “Fine. I’ll go find Penny and we’ll go actually have a nice time while you two cry in the sand.”

Abigail flipped him off, laughing as Sam stuck his tongue out and left to make good on his word. Sebastian toed his shoes and socks off, burrowing his feet in the cool sand as he watched Sam stroll off to where Maru and Penny were already laughing and talking to one another.

“Huh,” Abigail tilted her head as Penny shot Sam a shy smile. “Wonder when _that_ happened.”

“I have no clue,” Sebastian shrugged in response. The sun cut down from the sky at an angle, glancing past the docks and flaring at the corner of his vision. He shielded his eyes with his hands, squinting as Maru waved a cheerful goodbye towards the duo. “Think they’re together yet?”

Abigail hummed thoughtfully, then shook her head. “Nah. Sam wouldn’t be able to shut up about it if that were the case.” She straightened, stretching her arms overhead with a sigh. “I’m gonna go sit on the docks and pretend I’m not dying of heatstroke. Wanna join?”

Sebastian shook his head, “I’ll brave the sands a little longer.”

“Will you now?” Abigail snorted on a laugh, mischief dancing in her eyes. “You’re about as bad as Sam, y’know that, Sebastian?”

“I resent and deny any such accusations.”

“Whatever,” Abigail said, already walking towards the ramp leading up to the docks. “Tell farmer girl I said hi.”

Sebastian rolled his eyes, thankful that the wave of heat flooding his cheeks could be passed off on the heat of the day. Across the beach, the hard thrum of a bassline erupted from a set of speakers someone had managed to anchor into the sand. There was a squealing noise that could either have been a raging seagull or Emily, already drunk on whatever Pam had snuck into the punch this time, drawing a snort of amusement from Sebastian. A little further down, he could hear Lewis doing his best to flatter the governor into supplying the town with more funds.

“Lackeys abandoned you?”

Sebastian startled, having been halfway in the process of finally shucking his hoodie, and looked up into the now-familiar bank of placid green in Renee’s eyes. She was leaning against one of the totem decorations, hair pinned away from her face, swinging an empty canvas bag at her side, a crooked grin on her face. Sebastian shook his head.

“If Abby heard you call her a lackey, you’d be dead by now,” he pointed out, tying the sleeves of the jacket securely about his waist.

“Ah, she’ll forgive me,” Renee laughed, waving her free hand as if to brush the threat away. “She loves me too much to stay mad at me for long.”

Sebastian snorted, moving to stand next to Renee and tilt his head against the wooden sculpture. The sun, he noticed with no small amount of dismay, was climbing higher in the sky with each passing moment. The shade available on the beach was waning and, before long, he’d have to resort to digging out the rusty beach umbrella Robin still refused to get rid of and brought to the Luau every year, despite its decrepit nature and the fact that it couldn’t fully close or open and had to be secured into place with a discretely placed rubberband.

It was a humiliating spectacle, the fight to get it open and secure, but one Sebastian was willing to endure if it meant he didn’t have to look like a wounded lobster during molting season.

“I really wish,” he said after a moment of silence, “that someone would just fuck the soup up so bad that we’d all agree to never do this stupid Luau ever again.”

Renee made a choking noise, pressing the back of her hand to mouth. “Jesus,” she said after a moment. “Is there a single festival in this town you _do_ enjoy?”

“Very few.”

“Abigail’s right, you _are_ a goblin,” Renee laughed. “An unfeeling goblin who despises fun and sunlight.”

“I will neither confirm nor deny,” Sebastian slanted Renee a smile as she laughed again.

“Well,” Renee said as she calmed down, “you may just get your wish, goblin-boy.” She lifted her empty canvas bag, waggling it about in indication. “Mayor Lewis didn’t give me much of a warning about this whole community-soup-thing, so I couldn’t save any of my spring crops. And since my summer crops were such a disaster, I had to improvise.”

Sebastian’s brow furrowed. “You could have just not participated.”

“Yes, well,” she smiled, “not all of us are fun-hating goblins.”

“I think you and Abigail are spending too much time around each other.”

“You’re probably right,” she agreed, slinging her bag over-shoulder. Sebastian cut her a glance, eyeing the bag with some small amount of trepidation in spite of his bluster.

“So what exactly did you do?”

“Hmm,” she hummed, craning her neck to peer up at the sun-dappled sky above. “Well, as I said, I had to improvise. I tried fishing, but all I came up with was a bunch of trash and—get this—full, unopened cans of Joja Cola.”

“You did _not_ put Joja Cola in the community soup,” Sebastian said, almost pleading, suddenly stricken with the thought that he would be expected to consume a soup made out of literal garbage. Renee snickered at him, shaking her head.

“Don’t worry,” she soothed, “I gave the liquid rat poison to Sam. But since the fishing was a no-go, I had to climb down into the mines for something, which was less than ideal. I did find some carrots after a few levels. Shitty as they may have looked, I think they count as actual food.”

“You put _cave carrots_ in the soup?”

“Improvisation,” Renee nodded gravely, her attention pulled away as Lewis called the party to draw near.

 

 

The soup wasn’t as disastrous as either of them expected—apparently, Marnie’s prize goat had produced milk so wonderful, it balanced out the awful shriveled orange roots and made the soup merely mediocre instead of horrendously bad. Still, neither Sebastian nor Renee seemed able to eat more than a few spoonfuls before spluttering on laughter.

Lewis seemed suspicious, though unwilling to bring the matter up when the governor was so near and freshly disappointed at the bland soup. Sebastian mentioned it to Renee, who shrugged, swirling her spoon in the cream as she tried to determine the other ingredients.

“Lewis is a big softie,” she smiled up at him, “as long as everyone is still having fun, he wouldn’t mind too terribly. If I _had_ actually ruined the soup, he might have given me a stern talking-to. But even then I doubt it. Lewis likes me.”

“Lucky you,” Sebastian sipped at a glass of Gus’ spiked punch. “Lewis has always had it out against me.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“It’s true,” Sebastian insisted. “Ask Sam. Or Abigail. Or literally anyone in this town. Lewis definitely hates me ever since that time I accidentally egged his house on Spirit’s Eve.”

Renee paused, eyes narrowed as she peered up at him, “How exactly does one _accidentally_ egg someone’s house?”

Heat flooded Sebastian’s cheeks and he turned away with a cough, taking another deep drink of the punch before responding. “To be completely fair,” he stated, “I was both drunk and in high school, either of which should be enough to absolve me of all blame alone.”

“Uh-huh. So you got wasted and decided to egg the mayor’s house in an act of puberty-fueled teenage rebellion,” Renee summarized, looking highly amused. “And now you wonder why said mayor doesn’t like you?”

“I was aiming for Clint’s,” Sebastian protested, grimacing as Renee crumpled in another bout of laughter. “What? The guy’s a creep, he would’ve deserved it.”

“ _Please_ don’t let him hear you say that,” Renee said after a moment, swiping the moisture from her eyes. “He’s the only man in the entire town who knows how to sharpen an axe. I _need_ him.”

Sebastian rolled his eyes, “You sound like my mom.”

“That,” Renee pointed her spoon at him, grin still splitting her lips wide, “is possibly the highest compliment I’ve ever been paid. Your mom is awesome. I love her.”

“Now you sound like Abigail again.”

“What can I say?” Renee shrugged, “This town is full of kindred spirits.”

She seemed to mean it, voice warm and soft as her eyes flicked across the beach to watch the villagers as they celebrated the midsummer season. Her empty eyes, for once, didn’t seem to be contradicting her words. Renee seemed relaxed—happy, even—as if any moment whatever walls she had constructed would tumble down. And, Yoba, but wouldn’t that be a sight? A flood of light and emotions and mysteries that had been previously unknown, suddenly bursting at the carefully stitched seams of her being.

The thought brought a smile to his face. He didn’t even bother attempting to suppress it.

“Oh shit,” Renee cursed, pulling Sebastian from his reverie. “Alex. I totally forgot, shit.”

“Alex?” Sebastian asked, following her line of sight to where the jock was tossing a gridball for Dusty, Haley simpering at his side. “What about him?”

“ _His birthday_ ,” Renee keened, moving to set her bowl down on one of the nearby buffet tables. Sebastian followed her, somewhat helpless in his confusion. “Alex’s birthday is in two days and I have nothing for him. What does he like? Amethyst. Does he like amethyst?”

“I can honestly say I have no clue what kind of gems Alex likes,” Sebastian said, a little amused now. “I also doubt he’d really mind if you didn’t give him a present on his birthday. He got knocked around so much playing gridball, he probably can’t even remember when his own birthday is.”

“That’s not fair,” Renee huffed, stuffing her sandy feet back into the boots she had removed some while ago. “Alex isn’t dumb. He’s a good guy. I’d feel awful if I forgot his birthday, especially since—” she grimaced, shook her head. “Anyways. I have to go. See ya, Sebastian.”

“Okay,” Sebastian drawled, brows furrowing as he watched her trek her way back into town. “See you later, I guess.”

 

 

He awoke hours later to his mother running her fingers along his back, voice pitched low and soft. “Sebby? Honey, you need to wake up. Maru just got called into the hospital.”

“Maru?” He groaned, sitting up to rub the sleep from his eyes. “’S she okay?”

“She’s fine,” Robin soothed. Her eyes, when Sebastian blearily peered at them, were a maelstrom of turbulent emotions. So dark they were almost black, roiling and sloshing and nearly spilling over the brim. “Maru’s fine,” she repeated. “Harvey called her in to help with a patient, that’s all.”

“Then why—” he stopped, drinking in the sight of her distress, press his lips together and cup her hand where it gripped at his comforter. Robin laughed, the sound mirthless and wet.

“It’s Renee.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A realization. A lie.
> 
>  
> 
> Sebastian sighed. “Sometimes I think this town is killing itself. For all Lewis’ talk about small-town communities being tight-knit, we’re kind of shit about actually caring for each other.”

Sebastian would have been embarrassed at the speed at which he arrived at the hospital had he been the only one there. As it was, it seemed he was the last to arrive, Abigail and Sam already twitching nervously in the waiting room. The morning sun was just beginning to creep its way into the sky, its warm glow drowned out by the fluorescent lights flickering above them. The lights made their faces seem paler than usual when the pair looked up at him.

“Well,” Sam breathed after a minute, kicking his heel against the leg of his chair. “I guess there are perks to gossip in a small town. Spreads fast.”

Sebastian declined to respond, moving stand in front of them, hands pressed deep into his hoodie pocket. “Do you know what happened?”

Abigail shook her head, “Linus found her. She was unconscious outside the mines, so he took her here. Harvey hasn’t told us anything. I don’t think she’s woken up.” She pressed a hand through her hair, purple streaks falling messily across her face. “Did Linus tell you too?”

“No,” Sebastian said, dropping into one of the plastic chairs. “Maybe? I’m not sure. Maru got called in, so Mom told me.”

Abigail nodded. Sam let out a shaky breath. “She’ll be okay, right?” he asked, blue eyes sparking electric with concern. “I mean, this isn’t the first time she’s passed out after going down there. Harvey found her right before the egg hunt, remember?”

_It’s not the same,_ Sebastian didn’t say, fingers drumming against his thigh. _He didn’t call Maru in that time._

The light from the morning sun glanced off the glass frame of a poster about flu vaccines, reflecting a rainbow of light against the opposite wall. In the quiet, as he strained his ears for the sound, Sebastian thought he could hear Harvey’s soft voice asking Maru for something.

The clinic door opened. The three of them startled, eyes snapping to the front door as Shane walked in, a crease between his brows, Joja Mart apron secure around his waist. His gaze darted across the room, hand still gripping tight at the doorknob, lighting on the trio before flashing to the doors leading to the triage. His lips thinned.

He let go of the door, stepping in and crossing his arms. “Linus is bugging the entire town.”

The words were gruff, barely registering as an excuse, and Sebastian frowned to himself. There was worry, he realized, weaving its way past the layers of self-loathing in Shane’s eyes. There was something else there too, pregnant and heavy with emotion, something that Sebastian wasn’t sure he’d ever seen before. It hurt to look at.

_She’s helping him, Sebby_.

Shane cleared his throat. He still wasn’t looking directly at them, gaze flitting about the expanse of the room as if he wasn’t sure _where_ to look. “The chickens will need looking after.”

Abigail made a soft noise, half-tearful and half-realization. “Maple, too.”

Shane looked at her and Sebastian thought, for a moment, his eyes softened. And then he turned away, already pulling open the door. “I have to get to work.”

Abigail breathed a sigh as he left, standing and slinging her jacket over her arms. Sam and Sebastian looked up at her, blinking in a hazy stupor. She smiled at them, a little sad, eyes flashing with a determined air. “I’ll go feed and water them,” she said, “text me if anything happens, okay?”

Sebastian nodded, Sam echoing the sentiment with a soft, “Yeah. Give the chooks some extra love for me.”

Her smile deepened, a little more genuine, lifting her hand in goodbye as she slipped out of the clinic. Silence fell between Sam and Sebastian, dulled by the occasional tense huff of air and shifting of the vinyl chairs below them. It didn’t take long for Sam to break the silence fully.

“What do you think happened?”

Sebastian closed his eyes, letting his head fall back to bounce almost painfully against the plaster wall behind them. “I don’t know,” he said, the words soft. “I’m kind of trying not to think about it too hard.”

Sam nodded. He glanced at Sebastian, the electricity in his eyes sparking with something dark and wet. _Guilt_ , Sebastian thought, half-certain the sentiment was reflected in his own gaze. “She wasn’t doing well,” Sam said, confirming the notion before Sebastian could give it voice. “We knew she wasn’t.”

“There are a lot of people not doing well in this town,” Sebastian pointed out, not in contradiction or denial. The line of Sam’s mouth thinned, gaze flicking away. Sebastian sighed. “Sometimes I think this town is killing itself. For all Lewis’ talk about small-town communities being tight-knit, we’re kind of shit about actually caring for each other.”

“Renee isn’t.” Sam shrugged at Sebastian’s inquisitive glance. “I mean, it’s true, isn’t it? When’s the last time you’ve seen Linus willingly approach anyone in town for anything? Or, fuck,” Sam laughed, a little incredulous, hand gesturing towards the door in indication. “How about Shane? When have you ever seen him actually being anything resembling friendly towards literally anyone ever?”

Sebastian thought of burnt chocolate turning soft with worry and thought Sam was probably more right than he knew.

“And, I mean,” Sam continued, teeth snagging at his bottom lip. His fingers gripped knuckle-white at the fabric of his jeans and Sebastian frowned. “Vincent’s been asking a lot of questions, y’know? About dad. And the war. A _lot_ of questions. I didn’t know what to say or if I was saying it right or—”

He cut himself off and Sebastian grimaced in sympathy. “Fuck, dude, I’m sorry,” he said, meaning it entirely, and Sam flashed him a strained smile tinged with something like thankfulness.

“Anyway,” he continued. “Renee just listened. She didn’t judge. I didn’t know how much I needed that until then. And I know Penny’s mom,” he trailed off, frowning with a shake of his head. Sebastian cut him a glance. “Renee’s just been helping a lot.”

Sebastian nodded, choosing to let the comment about Penny’s mom go for the moment. “My mom said the same thing,” he agreed. A thought crossed his mind and he frowned, eyebrows drawn together in consternation. “Renee said she was going into the mines to get a birthday gift for Alex.”

“Huh.” Contemplation settled in long shadows across Sam’s face. He lifted his hands, counting off on his fingers, “Alex, Linus, Shane, Pierre, Penny, Abigail, you, me. Who else?”

Sebastian frowned. “My mom, I guess? She talked about Renee helping us with food and stuff.”

Sam nodded. “And then there’s the ripple effect, right?” he said softly, almost as if to himself. “Shane spreads to Jas and Marnie. Penny to Pam. Alex to George and Granny Evelyn. Me to Vincent. That’s most of the town right there.”

Gears were starting to turn in Sebastian’s mind, clicking and clunking along as he followed Sam’s direction. “And then there’s the museum,” he added, “she’s been donating practically everything she finds to Gunther.”

Sam snapped his fingers. “And how long has Willy been complaining about wanting someone to take up the mantle, so-to-speak? Renee’s been helping the _entire_ town.”

They grew quiet, the weight of implication resting on their shoulders. Sebastian ran a hand through his hair, grunting when his hands got caught in the tangles. Sam sighed, shoulders slumping, the dark wetness in his eyes growing heavier. Sebastian didn’t blame him.

After all, if Renee was busy helping all of them, who was helping her?

 

 

Harvey came out of the triage not long after the guilty silence had taken hold, looking tired but satisfied as he waved them through. “She’s awake but very tired,” he warned, warm compassion flashing in his gaze. “You’ll have to be quiet, but you’re welcome to stay.”

It was Sam who asked if she would be okay. Sebastian’s throat felt too tight to speak and Sam’s knowing, still guilt-ridden gaze did nothing to help. If Harvey noticed the odd tension of the air, he didn’t note it aloud, choosing instead to gratefully accept the clipboard Maru handed him as she passed, an IV bag of clear liquid in hand.

“She’ll be sore,” Harvey warned, “and groggy as well. But yes, I believe she’ll be just fine. Maru was indispensable.”

Sebastian wasn’t sure if the last bit of information was directed towards him or not, nor how to respond if it were. He nodded all the same, following Harvey and Sam past the curtained partition obscuring the patient quarters from purview. Renee was there, pale and prone against white sheets of scratchy cotton, oxygen tube wound around her neck and over her ears. Her hair was pulled back, a bandage at her temple, the corners of her mouth set in a deep frown. Her eyes were open, but only barely, heavy-lidded as if weighed down by the drugs surely coursing through her body.

Sam blew out a sigh beside him, rummaging one hand into his pocket for his phone, presumably to send Abigail the update she requested. Harvey stepped towards the bed, sliding the clipboard into place at the railing. The quiet that settled over them was eerie in its silence. Harvey broke it swiftly, looking oddly discomfited.

“Well,” he said, flashing a smile beneath his mustache at Renee, “you just call me or Maru if you need anything.” His gaze cut to Sebastian and Sam, then back again, “Try not to get too worked up.”

“Yeah,” Renee responded after a moment, delayed and hoarse of voice. The corner of her lip quirked up for a flash of a second. “Thanks, Harv.”

Harvey reached out a hand, patting gently at the foot-shaped bump beneath the sheets before departing.

“I don’t know about y’all,” Sam said as Harvey left, jovial and bright as he slumped into a chair beside Renee’s hospital bed. Her gazed dragged away from the door where she had been watching Harvey leave, lighting on the blond in a sluggish movement. “But I am not suited for early mornings.”

Renee smiled at him, “My whole livelihood is early mornings.”

Sam shuddered exaggeratedly at the notion. “I am afraid, Ms. Mauger,” a playfully sorrowful look passed over his face, “that my love for you is not enough to undertake our wedding. I haven’t the strength of a farmer’s constitution. My art would suffer.”

“Mmm,” Renee hummed, tilting her head back against the pillows with a barely audible sigh that might have been a chuckle. “Well, we certainly can’t have that. Your groupies would have my head.”

“Fear not, my beloved,” Sam crooned, placing a hand over his heart and bowing his head. Sebastian watched, more amused than he’d be willing to admit, as Sam contorted his face into an overly dramatic expression of determination. “For I shall find you the greatest match in all the land; one worthy to share in your spoils and not deathly allergic to hard labor, like yours truly.”

She snorted at him. “Great. I feel very reassured.”

“Hey, now,” Sam said, now taking playful affront to her dry tone. “I already found you a fantastic accountant, remember?”

“Yeah, no,” Sebastian finally found his voice, lips curving into a smile. “Renee, you’re screwed.”

Renee’s ensuing bark of laughter faded quickly into a hiss of pain, face twisting into a grimace as she shifted uncomfortably. Sebastian started, half-reaching towards her before thinking better of it, forcing his hand down and away. He shared a charged glance with Sam as Renee settled again, unsure what to do. Sam’s lips thinned.

“Renee,” Sam dropped the theatrics, flickering a barely-there smile in her direction when he captured her attention. “What _happened_ down there?”

Renee looked up at them, face pale as the sheets she laid on, eyes blank and—no. No, not blank, Sebastian was startled to realize. For the first time since he knew her, he was confident enough to say that Renee’s eyes _weren’t_ blank. Now they were careful, guarded, a thorny hedge of green shielding _something_ away. Some emotion or thought or knowledge she didn’t want them to see.

It should have been infuriating. It would have been, he considered, had those eyes belonged to anyone else. But in that moment, with her hiss of pain echoing in his mind, Sebastian could only find himself feeling relieved at the not-quite breach of her invisible walls.

“I don’t know,” Renee said, her voice crackling and soft. “I was picking away at an iron deposit. I must have gotten distracted, there was a—a bat or something. Must have startled me. Knocked my head around. I don’t know.”

She was lying to them. And, for the life of him, Sebastian couldn’t begin to fathom why she would. Neither Sam or Sebastian spoke, letting the deceit hang in the air between them. And then Sam was smiling, laughing in a way that didn’t touch the electric current in his eyes at all.

“Who knew the adultiest-adult I’ve ever met would be such a space cadet,” Sam winked at her, the words awkward and strained. The relief in Renee’s face—barely there, in the crow’s feet of her eyes and the curve of her mouth—set Sebastian’s teeth on edge.

He swallowed back his questions, his concerns and fears, and smiled right back.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another dream. The beginnings of a decision.
> 
>  
> 
> Too much disaster had befallen Renee Mauger in too short of a period. She needed rest, yet the summer months were slowly ticking by, drawing to a close, and her lack of summer crops and now incapacitated nature didn’t bode well for the farm’s future.

The second dream comes in fits and starts and shades of black. They streak across walls, monochrome and terrible, clawing at her feet as she runs down hallways and up twisted corridors.

Someone is cackling.

Her skin crawls, covered in gooseflesh. A gunshot pierces the air. She stumbles into a closet, pulling the door shut behind and breathing in dusty air and the pungent must of mothballs. Sinking down and down beyond mountains of clothes and shoes and forgotten things. She prays she too becomes forgotten.

And then there are footsteps, labored breathing, the clicking and scraping of metal grinding against metal. Floorboards creak. Fingers tap against wood. She holds her breath, eyes squeezing tightly shut as if to stave off the sobs rising in her chest.

The hinges of the door whine as they open.

She wakes with the light, tears streaked down her face and caught in dampened hair, breath shuddering and rattling in her chest. And she prays again.

 

 

Renee spent all of two days in Harvey’s clinic. They were mostly, Maru would assure when anyone asked her, a formality born of the doctor’s overly cautious nature. Secretly, Sebastian would think it had more to do with Renee’s overly stubborn nature.

Robin came to the clinic once, shooing everyone from Renee’s room with a wall of steel glinting in her eyes. No one heard the conversation that ensued nor asked what it might have entailed, but Sebastian could read tendrils of despair in Robin’s gaze when she left and frustration in the purse of Renee’s lips. It wasn’t hard to make conclusions from there.

Too much disaster had befallen Renee Mauger in too short of a period. She needed rest, yet the summer months were slowly ticking by, drawing to a close, and her lack of summer crops and now incapacitated nature didn’t bode well for the farm’s future. There was too much to be done—too much land to clear, too many mouths to feed, too little money in her account—before Autumn sung its tune. Sebastian was not familiar with farming—certainly not in the ways that Renee was—but even with his limited knowledge, he knew that fall was the most prosperous season.

And demanded the hardest work.

Renee was struggling to make ends meet. That much was clear. What was not clear was the reason behind the self-inflicted demands she had seemed to place on herself. Since Sam and Sebastian had discovered the efforts she had been going to on behalf of the entire town, it was becoming difficult to think of much else. Abigail, when she was brought into the fold, had sighed and run her hands through tangled hair.

“I don’t know,” she said, snagging a cola from the vending machine in the Stardrop’s back room and tossing it to Sam. “I don’t know why she’s doing it. But I don’t think that’s the question we should even be asking.”

She threw herself sideways at the couch, sinking deep into the cushions and frowning at the ceiling. “Why the fuck are we letting her do it alone?”

It was, Sebastian would reflect, a fair enough question. Pelican Town, over the years, had steadily given up on itself. Upon the departure of Mr. Mauger, the town had fallen into disrepair that no one attempted to fix. The farm rotted along with the bus, the general store, the community center, the people.

Mr. Mauger was the heart of their town. He had pumped his life force into the very foundations of the town and now, with his death and the subsequent arrival of his descendant, they expected Renee to do the same. And they expected her to do it alone.

The most shameful part of it all was, though he tried to believe otherwise, Sebastian wasn’t sure he would have noticed at all if Renee hadn’t gotten hurt. It was a frustrating notion. Despite his quiet contemplations, his near-constant desire to understand the farmer, it had been almost too easy to brush away every evidence begot from every conversation and interaction in lieu of feigned ignorance.

There had been a part of him, trembling and small and utterly selfish, that had wanted her to succeed no matter the cost. It burned hot coal of reproach within him, the knowledge that despite all of his efforts and belief he was no better than the very worst aspects of the small community he so often vilified. He had left himself get swept up in the undercurrent of unwavering hope, back turned to the storm that brewed dark and heavy against the horizon.

Not for the first time, Sebastian wondered if he should have danced with Renee the spring afternoon of the Flower Festival. Perhaps, he considered, something would have changed. Perhaps he would have been forced to see something, to know what was coming before it happened. Perhaps he could have prevented—

He knew it was a foolish line of thought before he had even finished it. There was no accounting for the future, no time machines to change the past. And if that fact made the skin of his palms itch and his chest feel tight, well, it wasn’t as if that was a new sensation.

It was Maru who pulled him from his reverie, stepping into the kitchen already clad in her nurse’s uniform. It was early, far earlier in the morning than Sebastian was used to, though if Maru was surprised by his presence she didn’t show. She made to grab a container of yogurt from the fridge, measuring out a portion into a bowl she had fetched from the cupboard. Sebastian watched, fingers tight around his coffee mug, unsure whether or not to break the soft silence.

Maru broke it instead.

“We’re releasing Renee this afternoon,” she said, topping her yogurt with granola and the blueberries she had frozen in a ziploc bag earlier that month. Pierre had probably outsourced them when Renee’s crops were ruined, Sebastian reasoned as Maru finished off her breakfast with a drizzle of honey.

“Dr. Harvey doesn’t think there’s much need for continual monitoring anymore,” she continued on. “She merely needs some rest, though whether she will or not is anyone’s guess.”

An understatement, if there ever was one, Sebastian considered. Maru spooned some of her yogurt into her mouth, something cautious wavering in her eyes. Concerned and calculating, a silver glint of something not unlike the look in Robin’s eyes that made him drag his gaze away, taking long dregs of his coffee to distract himself. Maru’s spoon clinked against her bowl, slow and deliberate.

“It won’t be easy to get her to settle down,” Maru said, head turned away from him when Sebastian looked up. She was staring out the kitchen window at the swaying grasses of the mountainside, golden light pouring molten against the foliage. In spite of the heat, the rains had kept the greenery flush.

It probably would have been a good season for farming.

“No, it won’t,” Sebastian agreed, voice soft. Maru didn’t look at him, swirling her utensil through her breakfast with a thoughtful expression.

“She’s stubborn. And Autumn’s just around the corner,” Maru added. For a moment, she looked as if she would continue, lips parting, only for the glimmer in her eyes to recede as suddenly as it had come. She smiled, pushing her chair away from the table with a scrape as she gathered up her dish. “I should get to work. Coming to see Renee off today?”

Sebastian contemplated rejecting the offer for barely a moment. He had spent too long at the hospital already—a backlog of neglected work haunting both his hard drive and his mind at night—but far more haunting had been the ever-present sensation of a guilty conscience. It drove him to Renee’s side faster than a flame, her tired face flashing behind his eyelids.

“Yeah,” he breathed, averting his gaze from Maru’s too-innocent looking eyes. “I’ll be there.”

 

 

“You really don’t have to,” Renee warned Sebastian later, gathering her belongings into a duffle bag. Abigail had supplied her with a change of clothes the day before, having somehow officially taken over caring for the farm in Renee’s absence. The soft cotton of her shirt looked worn and well-loved and Sebastian sent a silent thanks to Yoba for Abigail’s forethought, certain that the clothing had been carefully selected to bring the most comfort.

“I don’t mind,” Sebastian responded after a moment, realizing that Renee probably was expecting an answer. “Sam’s at work, Abigail’s busy helping at the store. I’m free.”

He shrugged lamely and Renee huffed a breath that might have been a laugh, rolling her eyes. “Harvey’s just paranoid, that’s all,” she said, zipping the bag closed with an air of finality. “I’ve made the trek to the farm so many times, I could probably find my way back blindfolded with my hands tied behind my back.”

Sebastian smiled at the image.

“I don’t mind the company, though,” Renee continued, her own smile touching her lips. “So long as you’re less fussy than your sister and the good doctor, of course.”

“All fussing will be kept to a minimum,” Sebastian assured, shoving his hands deep into his hoodie as if in demonstration. He stopped after a moment, eyeing the duffle bag before darting a hand out and snatching it up, slinging it over his shoulder before she could protest. “Starting now.”

Renee laughed but otherwise didn’t argue, holding the clinic door open for him as she called a cheerful goodbye to Harvey and Maru before darting after Sebastian.

They walked to the farm in a comfortable silence, slow-paced to account for the stiffness still present in Renee’s joints. It was warm but not overbearing, the vaguest hints of Autumn on the breeze. It was still too early for the leaves to change, waving bright and green against the blue of the sky, but the humidity had fallen back to a tolerable level in preparation for the changing seasons.

The woody blackberry bushes lining the lane were covered in small clusters of white blooms, bees and butterflies busily flitting to and fro amidst the blossoms, indicative of the coming season of jams and pies. If they were particularly lucky, come the annual valley fair, Gus might even experiment with the berries.

A few years back, he had crafted a mouthwatering pizza of blackberry, ricotta, and basil. The year before that, an Italian crumb cake utterly bursting with the fruit. Only last year, he had put the berries into his signature burger, blending the sweet tartness with savory spices that Sebastian couldn’t even begin to place.

Autumn had always been Sebastian’s favorite time of year.

The farm crept into view as they passed the abandoned bus stop. From the edge of his peripheral, Sebastian caught Renee’s head tilt towards the rusted out hunk of metal, a frown pulling her mouth into a grim countenance. It was replaced with a smile swiftly enough as they passed through the tree tunnel that made the entrance to the farm, the soft cries of Maple and the distant clucking of hens greeting them.

Renee laughed as Maple bounded towards them, weaving his way between their legs in winding patterns designed to trip them up. Almost reflexively, Sebastian grasped at Renee’s elbow, steadying her as they climbed up the steps of the veranda and into the small cottage. Maple followed them in, obviously thrilled at the return of his owner and demanding of the affections he had been deprived of in her absence. Sebastian relinquished the bag he had been carrying upon releasing Renee’s elbow and she shot a smile in his direction before bending to sort through the bag, placing orange bottles of medication on the table and dirtied clothing into the hamper.

Sebastian took the moment to inspect the open floor cottage, unsurprised at its meager offerings. A TV against the far wall, in front of which stood a tattered looking loveseat. A bookcase. A nightstand next to the bed that had been shoved into the corner. A table and chairs had been set in front of the window. Scattered about the room were small appliances—a portable washer and dryer for clothes, a kettle for water, a microwave, a coffee machine, a pot set atop a hotplate. The cottage was exactly as Sebastian expected, and yet something about it felt eerily strange and out of place.

It took him a moment to realize why.

“You don’t have curtains.” He meant it as a question, but it came out odd, shocked and awed as he stared at tall windows that did nothing to shield them from the afternoon sun. He thought of his basement, of the cool dark that always surrounded him like a comforting blanket, and frowned. He tried again. “Why don’t you have curtains?”

Renee straightened, casting a pensive glance towards the glass. That guarded look was back in her eyes, echoed in the tense line of her shoulders. “I like to see outside,” she said after a moment, quirking a half-smile that fell flat between them before turning away again. “The sunlight’s nice, too.”

“I suppose,” Sebastian responded, feeling as if he were navigating a vast expanse of minefields he hadn’t seen coming. “Must make it difficult to sleep in.”

The smile she sent him that time was less forced, her shoulders sloping downwards gently. “Unlike some, I actually have to get up early to do my work, remember?”

“More’s the pity for you.”

Renee’s laughter was tinged with relief and exhaustion. The sound was like a stab to his chest. “You should get some rest,” he said on a sigh, forcing a smile on his own face. “And try to sleep in, no one’s going to die if they don’t get fed at the crack of dawn.”

Renee snorted. “Try telling Maple that.” She hesitated, rubbing a hand up and down the length of her arm. Her mouth opened, half-forming a word before closing again. She sighed, sitting down on the bed, a rueful look crossing her face as she stared up at Sebastian. “Thanks for helping me, Sebastian.”

His face felt hot. “Don’t worry about it,” he shrugged the thanks away, shoving his hands deep into his pocket. “I’m just glad you’re doing okay.”

Her gaze flashed away from his, roaming across the expanse of the small interior. Renee pulled her knees up, crossing her legs beneath her. Maple jumped into her lap, purring hard, and she rubbed an absent hand against his flank. “Yeah,” she said after a moment, “m’sorry I scared you guys.”

Sebastian shrugged again, unsure what to say. Shadows were growing along the wall as the sun climbed its way into the tree cover shading the farm. Every once in a while a breeze would catch the branches, shifting the shadows into dizzying patterns that spun and danced across the wood paneling. It was strikingly quiet on the farm, Sebastian realized, with only the occasional clucking and rustling of a hen outside.

To the south, he knew, was the forest. Marnie’s. Leah. To the east, the town. North took the path up the mountain. The farm was sequestered far enough away from everybody that if, Yoba forbid, something happened to her—

“You okay over there?” Renee cut through his thoughts, voice a mix of concern and amusement as she tilted her head at him. He caught her gaze as he looked up, mesmerized by the flickering of hidden emotions that flashed beyond the canopy of green in her eyes.

Perhaps it was that gaze, he would later reflect, that placed the determined conviction in his voice. “Yeah,” he said, smiling as he made to leave. “Take care, Renee.”

He walked away from the farm with an idea half-formed in the corners of his mind.


End file.
